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Author Topic: This Day in History  (Read 199932 times)

Staggerwing

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Reply #135 on: October 08, 2019, 07:44:54 PM
That couldn't have been the original Ranger could it? Wasn't she sunk in 1941? I remember the U.S.S. Wasp was in one of the Malta runs in the Med.

That was the USS Langley (CV-1), sunk by Japanese bombers in 42. Ranger (CV-4) stayed in the Atlantic and survived the war.

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mirth

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Reply #136 on: October 08, 2019, 07:45:50 PM
Ranger made it through the war and was scrapped in '47. She was small and too slow to operate effectively in the Pacific. Too many compromises were made to fit her in under the Washington Treaty restrictions.

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Staggerwing

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Reply #137 on: October 08, 2019, 07:56:25 PM
I'm not sure it was the Treaty that was the problem. Her immediate predecessors, Saratoga and Lexington, were heavy cruisers that exceeded the treaty restrictions and were thus repurposed into CVs. Ranger was designed from the start to be a carrier. At that time the Navy still wasn't quite sure what it wanted and skimped too much, not realizing that eventually carriers would be the new battlewagons that set the pace for the rest of the fleet.

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mirth

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Reply #138 on: October 08, 2019, 08:00:55 PM
I'm not sure it was the Treaty that was the problem. Her immediate predecessors, Saratoga and Lexington, were heavy cruisers that exceeded the treaty restrictions and were thus repurposed into CVs. Ranger was designed from the start to be a carrier. At that time the Navy still wasn't quite sure what it wanted and skimped too much, not realizing that eventually carriers would be the new battlewagons that set the pace for the rest of the fleet.

The treaty was the problem due to the tonnage limits. There was only so much tonnage left for new carriers after Sara and Lex were built. The Navy opted to try for more small carriers rather than a few big ones. Compromises were made in the Ranger design as a result.

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Staggerwing

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Reply #139 on: October 08, 2019, 08:11:11 PM
I see what you mean.

I just reviewed the Treaty and it says that each nation could convert two capital ships of up to 33,000 tons to CVs but that the following CVs would be restricted to 27,000 tons. Small flat tops of 10,000 or less didn't count and neither did any already existing ones such as Langley. That would explain Saratoga and Lexington as the USN's two big 'gimmes'.

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mirth

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Reply #140 on: October 08, 2019, 08:24:25 PM
The treaty limits led to some interesting design choices.

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Sir Slash

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Reply #141 on: October 08, 2019, 11:14:49 PM
Thanks guys.  :bigthumb:

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Reply #142 on: October 14, 2019, 01:08:22 PM

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besilarius

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Reply #143 on: October 15, 2019, 09:09:46 AM
1943         British Adm. Sir Andrew Cunningham is appointed First Sea Lord of the Admiralty and Chief of the Naval Staff (1943-1946)

An aside on ABC:

The Night the War Ended

Although a pacifist, during World War II, Nicholas Monsarrat (1910-1979), a promising young novelist, decided to do his bit to defeat Hitler. Being an avid yachtsman, he promptly joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve.

Commissioned a sub-lieutenant, Monsarrat saw service in corvettes during the most desperate days of the Battle of the Atlantic. Proving a capable officer, he was promoted with unusual speed for a temporary reservist. By war’s end, having commanded successively a corvette, a frigate, and an escort group, and helped conduct numerous convoys across the ocean, he had risen to captain, and was serving on the staff of the Admiralty in London.

With the formal surrender of Germany on May 8, 1945, a carnival atmosphere quickly developed in London. By chance, Monsarrat was the Duty Captain in the Admiralty that night, assigned to stand watch in the command center. He arrived at the Admiralty at 9:00 p.m., by which time perhaps a million happy people were crowded into central London. From his post, Monsarrat could hear the cheers and singing of the crowds outside the historic Admiralty building, which had seen many a similar crowd celebrating Britain’s victories since it had been completed in 1726. As he would later write, “On a guilty impulse I deserted my post” to take in the scene. He made his way to the top of the great stone arch which marks the formal entrance to the Admiralty.

From the top of Admiralty Arch, Monsarrat could see an enormous host of people cheering and singing, from Buckingham Palace to Trafalgar Square and, most astonishing of all, a city in lights for the first time since blackouts had begun, nearly six years earlier.

But then he noticed something else, which he described in his memoirs.

        Then, on a half-turn, I became aware that I was not alone, on top of the Admiralty Arch.

        There was someone standing within five yards of me, also staring down at the crowds, and oblivious of close company for the same reason as I had been—because we were both entranced by the magnet of what was going on below.  With that perceptible twinge of nervousness which had been built into my life for so many years, I recognized, first the rank and then the man.

        The massive display of gold braid told me that he was an admiral, like his brave and lonely brother on top of the column [Nelson].  Then I realized that this was a very superior admiral indeed.  I counted one thick band of gold, and four thinner ones.  He was an Admiral of the Fleet-the highest any sailor could go.

        In fact, I suddenly recognized, he was the Admiral of the Fleet.  The man in my company was the First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral Cunningham.

Admiral of the Fleet Andrew Browne Cunningham, 1st Viscount Cunningham of Hyndhope, Bt, KT, GCB, OM, DSO (1883-1964), the most distinguished British sea-dog since Nelson, had joined the Navy at 15 in 1898, and been in the service for 47 years, seeing action in destroyers during World War I, at Gallipoli, on the Dover Patrol, and elsewhere, and then risen steadily in the years of peace, and then, during the first half of World War II had put in a masterful performance as Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet, before being named First Sea Lord.

Monsarrat took his discharge from the Royal Navy in 1946, For some years he served in the diplomatic corps, but then retired to become a full-time writer, and produced a steady stream of novels and short stories, most notably the brilliant The Cruel Sea, many of them based on his experiences in the war.

 

Note: Nicholas Monsarrat’s memoirs, published in the U.S. in one volume, BREAKING IN- BREAKING OUT AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY BY NICHOLAS MONSARRAT (New York: Morrow, 1971) has a detailed account of his wartime service. Much of this experience was used in his best novel, which remains in print, The Cruel Sea (Springfield, N.J.: Burford Books, 2000), which was made into a superior film in 1953, The Cruel Sea , starring Jack Hawkins.

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bayonetbrant

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Reply #144 on: October 15, 2019, 09:14:09 AM
nice tale there

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Sir Slash

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Reply #145 on: October 15, 2019, 12:13:44 PM
Without Cunningham, there would've likely been far less to celebrate and Englishmen to celebrate it.

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bob48

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Reply #146 on: October 15, 2019, 01:22:24 PM
Interesting stuff. been a lot of years since I read the book, or watched the film for that matter.

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Martok

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Reply #147 on: October 15, 2019, 02:47:11 PM
nice tale there

Seconded.  Thanks for sharing that, besilarius


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mirth

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Reply #148 on: October 16, 2019, 08:07:49 AM

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mirth

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Reply #149 on: October 17, 2019, 05:28:25 AM

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