@captainwalker
nice hadn’t heard of POWs guns jamming before
@barnee said in On this day during W.W. 2:
@captainwalker
nice hadn’t heard of POWs guns jamming before
There’s a kind of tragic irony to the fact that POW’s jammed in an action in which Britain’s last battlecruiser, HMS Hood, was destroyed by a spectacular explosion of its magazines. The cause of those jams can be traced back to the Battle of Jutland in 1916, in which several British battlecruisers were lost…including HMS Invincible, which also suffered a magazine explosion, and which was commanded by Admiral Horace Hood, a great-great-grandson of Admiral Samuel Hood (after which HMS Hood was named). Britain in 1916 had the world’s largest fleet of battleships and battlecruisers, but Jutland revealed a number of quality-control weaknesses on the British side. One of the problems was that ammunition and propellant hoists in the turret complexes lacked (or only had minimal; I can’t remember which) anti-flash shutters. On the plus side, this increased the rate at which the guns could fire; on the negative side, this made it possible for the blast effects of an enemy hit on a turret to propagate themselves down into the ammunition magazines. Jutland was a shock to the R.N., and it led to a number of changes. One change was that HMS Hood, then under construction, was redesigned and rebuilt, in part to give her more armour (which ultimately proved inadequate in her action against the Bismarck). Another change, however, is that the R.N. started taking anti-flash shutters more seriously. The subsequent irony is that The R.N. overcompensated: POW’s anti-flash shutters were so elaborate that they were finicky and prone to jamming. (It didn’t help that POW was a very new ship and had not fully worked up.)
@captainwalker said in On this day during W.W. 2:
May 24, 1941. Battle of Denmark Strait
At 0552 hours, British battlecruiser HMS Hood and battleship HMS Prince of Wales open fire on German battleship Bismarck and cruiser Prinz Eugen from 24 km. Although they outgun the Germans, both British ships have flaws.
HMS Prince of Wales holds the distinction of being the only British capital ship to face both the Kriegsmarine and the Imperial Japanese Navy in the first half of WW2. Unfortunately, she did not give a good account of herself, with her main guns jamming in her engagement against Bismarck and a lack of air cover and effective anti-aircraft gunnery leading to the IJN’s bombers sinking her.
HMS Prince of Wales was in commission for less than one full year, from 19 January to 10 December 1941. A tragic fate for what might have otherwise been a fine vessel.
-Midnight_Reaper
@Midnight_Reaper said in On this day during W.W. 2:
HMS Prince of Wales holds the distinction of being the only British capital ship to face both the Kriegsmarine and the Imperial Japanese Navy in the first half of WW2. Unfortunately, she did not give a good account of herself, with her main guns jamming in her engagement against Bismarck and a lack of air cover and effective anti-aircraft gunnery leading to the IJN’s bombers sinking her.
HMS Prince of Wales was in commission for less than one full year, from 19 January to 10 December 1941. A tragic fate for what might have otherwise been a fine vessel.
-Midnight_Reaper
On a brighter note, HMS Prince of Wales was one of the two ships – the other being the heavy cruiser USS Augusta – on which Churchill and Roosevelt held their first summit meeting in August 1941 at Placentia Bay, Newfoundland. The eight-point statement issued from the conference, which came to be known as the Atlantic Charter, presented the joint vision of the two leaders for the post-war world; it later inspired the United Nations Declaration which was signed by the Allied powers, which in turn later inspired the United Nations Charter. The Atlantic Conference, to which Churchill travelled aboard POW, has an partial connection to POW’s engagements with both the Germans and the Japanese. On the German side: POW’s journey to Newfoundland was her first mission after the refit which had repaired her battle damage she had suffered in her battle with Bismarck. On the Japanese side: if I’m not mistaken, one of the topics discussed by Roosevelt and Churchill was the strategic question (which the US and the UK had already been discussing for about a year) of how to reinforce British naval strength in Southeast Asia (and specifically at Singapore) against possible Japanese aggression. The general idea was that the Americans would take some of the load off the Royal Navy in the Atlantic, which would free Britain to redeploy some of its naval assets to Singapore; this ultimately evolved into the concept of Force Z, of which POW was part.
Front page of the Syracuse Herald-Journal, 27 May 1941.
Kittyhawk fighters of the American Volunteer Group flying near the Salween River Gorge on the Chinese-Burmese border, 28 May 1942
@captainwalker said in On this day during W.W. 2:
Kittyhawk fighters of the American Volunteer Group flying near the Salween River Gorge on the Chinese-Burmese border, 28 May 1942
SWEET !
@SS-GEN very nice pic.
31 May 1942 - Japanese midget submarines from submarines I-22, I-24, and I-27 penetrate the defenses of Sydney, Australia. At 2235 hours, one mini-sub was caught in torpedo nets and was scuttled by her own crew of two (both were killed in the process). The torpedoes of the other two mini-subs near-miss U.S. heavy cruiser Chicago (CA-29), but sink RAN accommodation ship Kuttabul and damage Dutch submarine K-IX beyond economical repair. All three Japanese midget submarines were lost in the attack.
Pictured below - Cruiser USS Chicago underway in Sydney Harbor, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, before the Japanese midget submarine attack that took place later that night, May 31, 1942
British troops crowd the deck of a Royal Navy destroyer (possibly HMS Gallant H59), arrive at Dover after sailing from Dunkirk, 31 May 1940.
Source: DB Colour
Sweetest !
US Marine Private Bruce Rutherford cleaning his Thompson submachine gun while playing with puppies Nanci, Shoto, Sake, Zero, Banzai, and Okinawa on Okinawa, Japan. June 1, 1945
On this day in 1944. Countdown to D-Day. Pathfinders, the first men to drop and mark drop zones. Men from 22 Independent Parachute Company, British 6 Airborne Division.
Source: RG Poulussen
Remembering all that died and served on this day in history.
@SS-GEN said in On this day during W.W. 2:
Remembering all that died and served on this day in history.
Yes indeed. Towards the end of Cornelius Ryan’s classic D-day book The Longest Day, as Rommel walks into his office and closes the door just as the clock strikes midnight and June 6th becomes June 7th, there’s a sentence which quietly makes the point that the Third Reich had less than a year left to its existence.
@CWO-Marc
A little off topic but am watching “Battle of Britain” right now. Haven’t seen it in ages. Forgot what Awesome flying was in it.
@barnee I don’t think I own it. Been a while since I saw it . Don’t get time to watch my kind of films any more.
@Wittmann
Well, hopefully time shows up for you with what you want to watch :) On a side note, I watched “Battle of Britain” “The Longest Day” and started on “A Bridge Too Far”. Being Anglo Saxon (which I guess Germans are too :)), I didn’t want to watch us lose :) so , Bridge Too Far was too far for me. :)
Was also the most German I’ve heard in a while :)
Paratroopers of Easy Company, 506th PIR, “Band of Brothers”, in the square of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, D+1.
On this day in 1944. More of 7th Armoured Division arrive on Gold. Cromwell ‘T121766W’ from ‘A’ Squadron, 4th County of London Yeomanry leads the way. The ‘W’ indicates a welded tank with armour up to 100mm thick!
Imperial War Museum
