“The Outsider” - Decades before ‘Flags of our Fathers’ this 1961 film follows Ira Hayes from basic training, to Iwo Jima, and the years following the war. Gain an appreciation of Ira’s demise as survivor’s guilt is thrust into the hero’s spotlight.
Hidden Gem: One of the best accounts of just how happenstance the second flag raising was.
Hurrah for HMS Petard.
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Today, October 30th, in 1942 the UK Destroyer HMS Petard sank the U559. Before she sank some of the crew boarded the Sub and captured Enigma equipment and codebooks which helped break this most important military code used by the Germans.
Churchill believed cracking Enigma won the war for Britain.HMS Petard was a P Class Destroyer and one of three to survive the war. She was 360feet long and weighed just over 2000 tons fully loaded. She was armed with 4 4.7inch guns and carried 100 depth charges. Her top speed was 37 knots.
She also sank an Italian and a Japanese Sub. -
@wittmann:
HMS Petard was […] one of three to survive the war.
Personally I would have been very nervous about serving on a ship bearing as a name the French word for “firecracker.”
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Good one Marc. Did not pick up on that!
Funny. A bit like the tallest and possibly heaviest at 300lbs, Confederate General, William Peck, surviving the war unscathed and the shortest, John C.C. Sanders, being mortally wounded.
Nothing is certain in war.
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