What's new
By:
Filters
Gamecock Fanatics

This is a sample guest message. Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

Countdown to Kickoff

USS Fanshaw Bay, CVE-70.

1280px-USS_Fanshaw_Bay_(CVE-70)_transporting_aircraft_on_17_January_1944_(NH_106573).jpg


Battle off Samar

Fanshaw Bay and White Plains were located on the west flank, and therefore bore the opening volleys of the engagement. Beginning at 6:58, both of the carriers came under fire from the Japanese task group, which was situated about 16.6 mi (26.7 km) away. The Japanese were firing dye-marked shells to gauge their aim, and the escort carriers were, much to the concern of their command, straddled in plumes of colored water. The officers would certainly be more concerned if they were able to correspond the color of the dyed water to that of a particular Japanese ship, as plumes of red, green, blue, purple, pink and yellow dyed water started to dot the ocean. Unbeknownst to the crew, the pink dyes corresponded to the Japanese battleship Yamato, with its 18 in (460 mm) guns, the largest ever manufactured, and the yellow dyes corresponded to the Japanese battleship Kongo, with its 14 in (360 mm) guns. Fortunately for Fanshaw Bay's crew, as the shells slowly creeped up to her stern, she happened across a passing rain squall at 7:03, reducing visibility to just 0.5 mi (0.80 km).

At the same time that Fanshaw Bay was being harried by shells, the twelve aircraft that she had launched, joined by four fighters which had been on patrol, commenced attacks against the leading Japanese ships. Their attacks were mostly ineffective, mostly due to their light armaments and a general lack of coordination. The task group emerged from the rain squall by 7:23, but it was not until 7:50 that Fanshaw Bay came under concentrated fire again. At 7:50, four 8 in (200 mm) shells made impact with her hull, with another two missing just in front of her bow. One shell penetrated through a ventilator, killing two men as it tore into the carrier. Another shell passed under one of her Bofors guns, tearing the face off of one of her crew. Deflected by the gun's shield, the shell ricocheted over her flight deck. Another shell destroyed her catapult track, and resulted in a small explosion within her flag office. Four small fires had been kindled by these shells, but they were quickly put under control, along with a minor issue with flooding. Although four men had been killed in the attack, her operational capability was not significantly compromised. Rather, Fanshaw Bay's 5 in (130 mm) gun responded by firing against one of the leading Japanese cruisers, landing at least five hits against its superstructure.
Click to expand...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Fanshaw_Bay

 
USS Hopper, DDG-70.

1920px-USS_Hopper_(DDG-70)_departs_Pearl_Harbor_160520-N-GO855-405.jpg


USS Hopper (DDG-70) is an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer of the United States Navy, named for the pioneering computer scientist Rear Admiral Grace Hopper.
Click to expand...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Hopper

Grace Brewster Murray Hopper (née Murray December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992) was an American computer scientist and United States Navy rear admiral.  One of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer, she was a pioneer of computer programming who invented one of the first linkers. Hopper was the first to devise the theory of machine-independent programming languages, and the FLOW-MATIC programming language she created using this theory was later extended to create COBOL, an early high-level programming language still in use today.

Prior to joining the Navy, Hopper earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale University and was a professor of mathematics at Vassar College. Hopper attempted to enlist in the Navy during World War II but was rejected because she was 34 years old. She instead joined the Navy Reserves. Hopper began her computing career in 1944 when she worked on the Harvard Mark I team led by Howard H. Aiken. In 1949, she joined the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation and was part of the team that developed the UNIVAC I computer. At Eckert–Mauchly she managed the development of one of the first COBOL compilers. She believed that a programming language based on English was possible. Her compiler converted English terms into machine code understood by computers. By 1952, Hopper had finished her program linker (originally called a compiler), which was written for the A-0 System.  During her wartime service, she co-authored three papers based on her work on the Harvard Mark 1.

In 1954, Eckert–Mauchly chose Hopper to lead their department for automatic programming, and she led the release of some of the first compiled languages like FLOW-MATIC. In 1959, she participated in the CODASYL consortium, which consulted Hopper to guide them in creating a machine-independent programming language. This led to the COBOL language, which was inspired by her idea of a language being based on English words. In 1966, she retired from the Naval Reserve, but in 1967 the Navy recalled her to active duty. She retired from the Navy in 1986 and found work as a consultant for the Digital Equipment Corporation, sharing her computing experiences.
Click to expand...
800px-Commodore_Grace_M._Hopper,_USN_(covered).jpg


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper

 
USS Blessman, DE-69. A rarity, she was a participant in DDay and then transferred to the Pacific to screen the other invasions of Luzon and Iwo Jima as well.

300px-USS_Blessman_(DE-69)_underway_at_sea,_circa_in_1943.jpg


 
USS Milius, DDG-69.

1280px-USSMiliusDDG-69.jpg


USS Milius (DDG-69) is an Arleigh Burke-class Aegis guided missile destroyer of the United States Navy. It is the first United States Navy Ship named after a POW/MIA from the Vietnam War. She is named after Captain Paul L. Milius, a Naval Aviator presumed killed following the crash of his aircraft over Laos in February 1968. Captain Milius's daughter, Annette, became the sponsor and later christened the ship named in honor of her father.
Click to expand...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Milius

 
USS Kalinin Bay, CVE-68.

USS_Kalinin_Bay_(CVE-68)_underway_at_sea,_circa_in_1944.jpg


Battle off Samar

Kalinin Bay accelerated to flank speed; and, despite fire from three enemy cruisers, she launched her planes, ordering the pilots "to attack the Japanese task force and proceed to Tacloban airstrip, Leyte, to rearm and refuel." As salvos fell "with disconcerting rapidity" increasingly nearer Kalinin Bay, her planes, striking the enemy force with bombs, rockets, and gunfire, inflicted heavy damage on the closing ships.

As the trailing ship in the escort caravan, Kalinin Bay came under intense enemy fire. Though partially protected by chemical smoke, by a timely rain squall, and by valiant counterattacks of screening destroyers and destroyer escorts, she took the first of 15 direct hits at 0750. Fired from an enemy battleship, the large caliber shell (14 inch or 16 inch) struck the starboard side of the hangar deck just abaft the forward elevator.

By 0800, the enemy cruisers, which were steaming off her port quarter, closed to within 18,000 yards. Kalinin Bay gamely responded to their straddling salvos with rapid fire from her single 5 inch gun, which only intensified the enemy fire. Three 8 inch, armor-piercing projectiles struck her within minutes of each other. At 0825, the carrier's 5-incher scored a direct hit from 16,000 yards on the No. 2 turret of a Nachi-class heavy cruiser, and a second hit shortly thereafter forced the enemy ship to withdraw temporarily from formation.

At 0830, five enemy destroyers steamed over the horizon off her starboard quarter. The closing ships opened fire from about 14,500 yards; and, as screening ships engaged the cruisers and laid down concealing smoke, Kalinin Bay shifted her fire and, for the next hour, traded shots with Japan's Destroyer Squadron 10. Many salvos exploded close aboard or passed directly overhead; and, though no destroyer fire hit Kalinin Bay directly, she took ten more 8 inch hits from the now obscured cruisers. One shell passed through the flight deck and into the communications area, where it destroyed all the radar and radio equipment.

At about 0930, as the enemy ships fired parting salvos and reversed course northward, Kalinin Bay scored a direct hit amidships on a retreating destroyer. Five minutes later, she ceased fire and retired southward with the surviving ships of Taffy 3. At 1050, the task unit came under a concentrated air attack. During the 40-minute battle, the first attack from a Kamikaze unit in World War II, all except Fanshaw Bay were damaged. One plane of Lieutenant Yukio Seki and his Shikishima squadron crashed through St. Lo's flight deck and exploded her torpedo and bomb magazine, mortally wounding the carrier. Four diving planes attacked Kalinin Bay from astern and the starboard quarter. Intense fire splashed two close aboard; but a third plane crashed into the port side of the flight deck, damaging it badly. The fourth hit destroyed the aft port stack.

Though Kalinin Bay suffered extensive structural damage during the morning's furious action, she counted only 5 dead among her 60 casualties. Weary and battle scarred, Kalinin Bay was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation for heroic conduct as a unit of Taffy 3. She steamed via Woendi, Schouten Islands, to Manus, arriving 1 November for emergency repairs. Getting under way for the United States 7 November, the escort carrier reached San Diego 27 November for permanent repairs and alterations.
Click to expand...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Kalinin_Bay

 
Last edited by a moderator:
USS The Sullivans, DDG-68.

1920px-US_Navy_090213-N-4774B-028_The_guided-missile_destroyer_USS_The_Sullivans_(DDG_68)_flies_the_ship's_battle_flags_during_exercises_at_sea.jpg


USS The Sullivans (DDG-68), is an Arleigh Burke-class (Flight I) Aegis guided missile destroyer. It is the second ship of the United States Navy to be named for the five Sullivan brothers – George, Francis, Joseph, Madison, and Albert Sullivan, aged 20 to 27 – who lost their lives when their ship, USS Juneau, was sunk by a Japanese submarine in November 1942 in the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. This was the greatest military loss by any one American family during World War II.
Click to expand...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_The_Sullivans_(DDG-68)

 
Last edited by a moderator:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top