Posted on 03/20/2018 1:02:10 AM PDT by US Navy Vet
My late Dad was in the Navy in WWII. North Atlantic Convoy duty on Cans. Two shot out from under him in the Med. Last half of the war on Guam.
He always referred to them as “Those Purple-Pissin’ Jap Bastards!”
Who am I to correct him? He was there.
The USS Juneau, CL52, was the ship that went down with the 5 Sullivan Brothers.
Not the O’Sullivans.
The Sullivans, DD537.
I served a year on the Sullivans when I was a teenager.
US' WWII torpedo development suffered from spending cuts in Defense; which otherwise, would have shortened the war considerably. US' WWI torpedoes were actually better.
Problems with the warhead triggering mechanism aside (a bit “if”), the US torpedoes suffered from a lack of imagination in design.The earliest compressed air torpedoes simply used the mechanical energy stored in the compressed air to power the propeller. That was deemed unsatisfactory because the pressure in the the air tank dropped rapidly because the temperature dropped with the drop in pressure. To compensate for that effect, they added fuel and burned it in the compressed air. And that was the basic design of the US Navy torpedo (and, AFAIK, that of the rest of the world other than Japan) at the start of WWII.
The Japanese did the logical thing and viewed the problem as one of generating the maximum volume of gas at the maximum pressure, from a system which fit inside a torpedo tube. When you look at it that way, you realize that pure oxygen is five times as chemically energetic as the same volume of air at the same pressure. The USN called the Japanese torpedo the “Long Lance” but the Japanese name for it translated into English as the “oxygen torpedo.”
I assume that the Japanese would have used a relatively dilute mixture of alcohol as the fuel in their oxygen torpedo,so that the temperature of the combustion gas going into the turbine would not promptly melt the turbine . . .
About the word gook. It came to be used during the Korean conflict. The word Meegook is Korean for white occidentals, Hahngook is Korean for Koreans. As US soldiers entered villages the Koreans shouted Meegook at the soldiers. So there really is nothing about the word Gook that is derogatory.
When the B-29’s could reach Japan form the South the first target selected was the long lance torpedo factory. That’s how important it was to damage that facility.
They delayed the showing of “The Fighting Sullivans” because of the impact it might have on morale.
John McCain got in hot water because he used the term “gook”.
The idiot used it to refer to the Vietnamese.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXRMrETJxE4
Video of 86 year old Frank Holmgren, one of the men who survived the sinking of the USS Juneau, explaining the battle and the fight for survival from sharks afterwards.
He died five days after this interview in 2012.
That depends on how you use it. Sometimes I use "nice person" as a negative epithet - as in, "Some nice person put the milk back in the refrigerator with a teaspoon of milk left in the carton."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TrPylyJRBg
Video of finding the stern of the USS Juneau and the positive identification of the vessel.
The debris field was a mile long. The stern was found next to the bow, and the midship section was a fair distance away from both.
The ending scene of the movie, with the five brothers waving, and then turning to march into the clouds together had a very big impact on me as a kid watching the movie.
Yep, the screen always gets really blurry on that one.
And even then, the one brother was always lagging behind.
LOL—yeah, the youngest one, Albert.
Who was married and had one child.
When I was a kid the older men called them pan heads and zipper necks.
I get a kick outa that, because when I say those phrases no one knows what I'm talking about.
Those epithets have died, it seems.
Hadn’t known that.That’s how important it was to damage that facility.
- Neptune's Inferno:
- The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal
Gives an
interestingfascinating illustration of the significance of the “Long Lance.” The USN had the advantage of radar over the Japanese Navy, but the advantage of the “Long Lance” balanced it out and reduced the fight to a draw. That was because the Navy lacked experience in trusting/exploiting Radar - and because the Navy lacked IFF. So the Japanese Destroyers were extremely dangerous to American Destroyers and capital ships.
I believe the Korean war was the genesis of the sometimes heard description of “Ten thousand screamin’ motherf***ers” after seeing a few of the massed charges my NORKS and ChiComs coming at them.
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