I’ve been researching France in World War 2 recently, and I stumbled upon this article on JSTOR:
Unfortunately, my regular free JSTOR account cannot access this.
Please let me know if you have access to this article in any way. Thank you!
What would you have chosen to command?
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@wittmann:
Worsham: I had you pegged!
Good call. :-D
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I too was unsure between a Battleship and Carrier- in the end though with hindsight being 20/20- I did not want to be relegated to ‘softening up’ islands in a Battleship- so I chose the new capital ship- the aircraft carrier.
This goes against everything I have learned in the last 10 years (two kinds of ships- submarines and targets… I got my submarine dolphins (pin) in 2006…). However, sub life in WWII was not my style…
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I too was unsure between a Battleship and Carrier- in the end though with hindsight being 20/20- I did not want to be relegated to ‘softening up’ islands in a Battleship- so I chose the new capital ship- the aircraft carrier.Â
Battlships WASHINGTON, SOUTH DAKOTA and KIRISHIMA did more than soften up Islands on the night of November 13, 1942. Talk about drama firing broadsides from under 10,000.
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@ABWorsham:
I too was unsure between a Battleship and Carrier- in the end though with hindsight being 20/20- I did not want to be relegated to ‘softening up’ islands in a Battleship- so I chose the new capital ship- the aircraft carrier.�
Battlships WASHINGTON, SOUTH DAKOTA and KIRISHIMA did more than soften up Islands on the night of November 13, 1942. Talk about drama firing broadsides from under 10,000.
Fair enough, but for every instance you show of this happening you could find 100 instances of carriers fighting battles and 100 instances of Battleships softening up islands.
It would have been exciting to be sure on a Battleship in a fight, but there just weren’t many of them outside of kamakaze attacks (USS Missouri comes to mind).
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I too was unsure between a Battleship and Carrier- in the end though with hindsight being 20/20- I did not want to be relegated to ‘softening up’ islands in a Battleship- so I chose the new capital ship- the aircraft carrier. This goes against everything I have learned in the last 10 years (two kinds of ships- submarines and targets… I got my submarine dolphins (pin) in 2006…). However, sub life in WWII was not my style…
Life on US subs in WWII at least had the advantage of being more comfortable than life on a U-boat. The US Navy had a preference for big fleet-type submarines that could operate over vast distances in the Pacific, and their size allowed them to be much better stocked in terms of provisions than German subs. As I recall, they even included facilities to keep refrigerated foodstuffs. I’ve heard (and perhaps BJCard, as a submariner, can confirm whether it’s true) that the US Navy does even better in this respect today, and that the best chow you get in any of the US services is on nuclear subs – both the missile boats and the attack boats.
In the second half of WWII, by the way, US battleships had another important role besides shore bombardment: they provided anti-aircraft protection to aircraft carriers. US fleets operated in circular formations, with the carriers at the centre and the battleships forming the innermost defensive ring around the flattops. I’ve seen some night-time footage of the wall of AA fire that battleships could put up – .50 cal machine gun bullets, 20mm and 40mm cannon shells, and 5-inch gunfire – and it’s pretty impresive, especially when you consider that you’re only seeing the .50 tracer rounds (which I think were used in a 1-to-3 ratio with armour-piercing and incendiary rounds).
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I wouldn’t say the chow on a modern US nuclear sub is 5 star or anything, but it is better than the surface fleet. We have more money per man to spend on food than the surface ships.
What helps the quality is the number of people they are serving as well- when you cook for a 100 people the food in general is going to be better than if you are cooking for 500 or more. There’s also food available in ‘crew’s mess’ 24 hours a day, which is not the case of larger ships (only during meal times).
In addition, we would only have to wait 15 min or so in the ‘chow line,’ whereas on a US aircraft carrier the chow line is an hour or more.
We would get steak and lobster once every 3-4 months or so. Ice cream (hard pack) every day. Breakfast has eggs to order. No soda/beer though- only milk (powdered junk after a couple weeks at sea), coffee, and ‘bug juice’ (crystal light). Of course we have the best water in the world- we make fresh water from the cleanest water in the world (Distilled water from 400+ feet- Fantastic stuff, magical really…). I hear boomers have soda machines and surface ships have legit soda machines.
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Thank you for the menu run down BJCard.
I suppose you do not all share one toilet either, like they did on Das Boot.
Very interesting to hear about the drinking water. -
We would get steak and lobster once every 3-4 months or so. Ice cream (hard pack) every day. Breakfast has eggs to order. No soda/beer though- only milk (powdered junk after a couple weeks at sea), coffee, and ‘bug juice’ (crystal light). Of course we have the best water in the world- we make fresh water from the cleanest water in the world (Distilled water from 400+ feet- Fantastic stuff, magical really…). I hear boomers have soda machines and surface ships have legit soda machines.Â
Thanks for the info – I always find these kinds of details interesting.
Regarding the powered milk, I guess some things never change. In the WWII movie Destination Tokyo (made during the war), there’s a scene in which the camera pans down over the menu of the Christmas dinner that will be served to the crew, and the last item – after a long list of goodies – is “Fresh Milk (while it lasts)”. And in the classic WWII sub film Run Silent, Run Deep (made in the 1950s, I think), an admiral comes aboard the Nerka when it docks at Pearl Harbor and asks the Executive Officer (played by Burt Lancaster) for a glass of milk. Lancaster says, “We only have powdered, sir.”
The part about the ice cream reminds me of an incident aboard one of the Iowa class battleships during WWII. A large number of sailors were lined up at the ship’s “gedunk bar” (soda fountain / ice cream counter) to get their daily allowance of ice cream. One young sailor tried to jump the cue, only to discover that one of the people he’d gotten ahead of was Bill Halsey. The Admiral casually told him to “Get back in line, son,” which the sailor very promptly did.
I wonder if the expression “bug juice” was inspired by this stuff…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torpedo_juice
…which was rather more potent than crystal light.
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I wouldn’t say the chow on a modern US nuclear sub is 5 star or anything, but it is better than the surface fleet. We have more money per man to spend on food than the surface ships.
What helps the quality is the number of people they are serving as well- when you cook for a 100 people the food in general is going to be better than if you are cooking for 500 or more. There’s also food available in ‘crew’s mess’ 24 hours a day, which is not the case of larger ships (only during meal times).
In addition, we would only have to wait 15 min or so in the ‘chow line,’ whereas on a US aircraft carrier the chow line is an hour or more.Â
We would get steak and lobster once every 3-4 months or so. Ice cream (hard pack) every day. Breakfast has eggs to order. No soda/beer though- only milk (powdered junk after a couple weeks at sea), coffee, and ‘bug juice’ (crystal light). Of course we have the best water in the world- we make fresh water from the cleanest water in the world (Distilled water from 400+ feet- Fantastic stuff, magical really…). I hear boomers have soda machines and surface ships have legit soda machines.Â
What every good sailor should be doing, is stowing away a few food products for ‘resale’ or ‘trade’ after a few weeks at sea! :P
LOL @ the Torpedo Juice!
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One plus about a sub is your death would be pretty quick, relative to bleeding to death on the battlefield, or burning to death in a tank, or drowning slowly in a surface vessel.
Once the hull ruptures at depth, death would be almost instantaneous. -
@wittmann:
Thank you for the menu run down BJCard.
I suppose you do not all share one toilet either, like they did on Das Boot.
Very interesting to hear about the drinking water.The officers have 1 urinal/1 toilet; the chiefs have 1 urinal/1 toilet, the rest of us had 1 urinal/4 toilets. Not to mention any number of ‘funnels’ in the engine room. No shame on a submarine.
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@Uncrustable:
One plus about a sub is your death would be pretty quick, relative to bleeding to death on the battlefield, or burning to death in a tank, or drowning slowly in a surface vessel.
Once the hull ruptures at depth, death would be almost instantaneous.Not sure where bug juice came from to be honest, it is red colored crystal light.
Death on a sub would be very quick depending on depth… however slowly sinking past crush depth would be a horrible feeling… If it were shallow enough, there are means to escape a submarine if one of the compartments held pressure. Unfortunately 99% of the ocean is too deep for that.
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I wouldn’t say the chow on a modern US nuclear sub is 5 star or anything, but it is better than the surface fleet.� We have more money per man to spend on food than the surface ships.
What helps the quality is the number of people they are serving as well-� when you cook for a 100 people the food in general is going to be better than if you are cooking for 500 or more.� There’s also food available in ‘crew’s mess’ 24 hours a day, which is not the case of larger ships (only during meal times).
In addition, we would only have to wait 15 min or so in the ‘chow line,’ whereas on a US aircraft carrier the chow line is an hour or more.�
We would get steak and lobster once every 3-4 months or so.� Ice cream (hard pack) every day.� Breakfast has eggs to order.� No soda/beer though- only milk (powdered junk after a couple weeks at sea), coffee, and ‘bug juice’ (crystal light).� Of course we have the best water in the world- we make fresh water from the cleanest water in the world (Distilled water from 400+ feet- Fantastic stuff, magical really…).� I hear boomers have soda machines and surface ships have legit soda machines.�
What every good sailor should be doing, is stowing away a few food products for ‘resale’ or ‘trade’ after a few weeks at sea! :P
LOL @ the Torpedo Juice!
The best items to trade was soda, candy, porn, dvds, cigarettes, and chewing tobacco. After you leave port, money is useless. I didn’t smoke or chew and I always had some. It was best to wait for the inevitable ‘extension at sea’- most people used their stuff sparingly until they thought we would pull back in to port- however if we got extended at sea… you’d be surprised how much tobacco, soda, etc can be worth.
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dvds
A CBC reporter accompanied a Canadian Navy crew as it brought to Canada one of those second-hand diesel-electric subs we purchased from Britain a few years ago. He noticed that the most popular movies aboard – “as if these guys can’t get enough at the office” was his comment – were Das Boot and The Hunt for Red October.
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@CWO:
dvds
A CBC reporter accompanied a Canadian Navy crew as it brought to Canada one of those second-hand diesel-electric subs we purchased from Britain a few years ago. He noticed that the most popular movies aboard – “as if these guys can’t get enough at the office” was his comment – were Das Boot and The Hunt for Red October.
The only submarine movie that wasn’t popular was ‘K-19…’ for obvious reasons…
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The only submarine movie that wasn’t popular was ‘K-19…’ for obvious reasons…
This one is a bit obscure…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morning_Departure
…but I don’t think it would have been popular either if it had been shown.
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@CWO:
The only submarine movie that wasn’t popular was ‘K-19…’ for obvious reasons…
This one is a bit obscure…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morning_Departure
…but I don’t think it would have been popular either if it had been shown.
Ugh, no way would that be watched on a sub… bad juju.
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No shame on a submarine.Â
Jones: Refreshingly informal, your American Navy.
Ferraday: On submarines, anyway, living as close as we do. We operate on a first-name basis. My first name is Captain.- Ice Station Zebra
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@ABWorsham:
I too was unsure between a Battleship and Carrier- in the end though with hindsight being 20/20- I did not want to be relegated to ‘softening up’ islands in a Battleship- so I chose the new capital ship- the aircraft carrier.�Â
Battlships WASHINGTON, SOUTH DAKOTA and KIRISHIMA did more than soften up Islands on the night of November 13, 1942. Talk about drama firing broadsides from under 10,000.
Fair enough, but for every instance you show of this happening you could find 100 instances of carriers fighting battles and 100 instances of Battleships softening up islands.Â
It would have been exciting to be sure on a Battleship in a fight, but there just weren’t many of them outside of kamakaze attacks (USS Missouri comes to mind).
WWII was no doubt an aircraft carrier war.
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@ABWorsham:
WWII was no doubt an aircraft carrier war.
It’s certainly the war in which the carrier displaced the battleship as the most powerful naval unit operating on the surface of the ocean. And in broader terms, WWII proved – as early as the invasion of Norway in May 1940 – that a naval force unsupported by air power was in a much more precarious position that had been the case prior to the development of effective aviation. The British learned it the hard way in Norway, and had to re-learn the lesson again when the Japanese sank Prince of Wales and Repulse off the coast Malaya in December 1941.
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