Remembering the Pearl Harbor attack 75 years later.

[KellyinAvon]

My Grandma had a cousin from Orleans who was a Pearl Harbor survivor. He turned 19 just before Christmas 1941. It was over a week before the family found out he'd survived. Different times.

 

[actaeon277]

So I was privileged to grow up with a next door neighbor that was a extremely rare ww1,ww2,Korea Navy veteran he joined the Navy at 17 in 1917 he served on the USS Delaware doing crap work and hating life. He reenlisted and served in the pacific fleet.
This dude had some stories to tell about China in the 1920’s. He had no children so I had a crazy kinda uncle who drank Hamms beer.
So I guess he was kinda pissed to get assigned to the USS Pyro an ammo ship nice name! He was like the 2nd in charge NCO of the ship no idea what that means In the Navy. On 7 December he said most of the crew was hanging out in the barracks on shore on the Captain was hanging around no other officers were present. They were about half empty of ammo all small arms were gone just the big stuff left.
He said they were on “shore power” I don’t really know what that means and the en

Well, I could be wrong, I served in 85-91.
But... NCO is non-commissioned officer. Petty Officers and Chief Petty Officers are NCOs. Petty Officer starts at E-4
E-1 Seaman
E-2 Seaman Recruit
E-3 Seaman Apprentice
E-4 Petty Officer 3rd class
E-5 Petty Officer 2nd class
E-6 Petty Officer 1st class
E-7 Chief Petty Officer
E-8 Senior Chief Petty Officer
E-9 Master Chief Petty Officer (The most senior E-9 in the entire Navy is called the Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy. He is the senior enlisted person in the entire navy, and as such serves as a link between the officer corp and enlisted, stationed in D.C.

The senior enlisted on a boat, is called the Chief of the Boat, or the COB. He is the link between officer corp and enlisted on the boat. I do not know what the equivalent is called on a ship.
The second senior enlisted is.... a nobody. The Vice President of the US actually has a position. The second senior enlisted is just the second senior enlisted.


Shore power means that the ships engines and power generation systems are offline. Power to run lights, motors, pumps, ovens, blowers, fans, etc are coming from the shore, through very large diameter cables.
Most ships in that period utilized steam engines. Fuel could be coal or diesels.
One of the disadvantages of a steam engine is the time required to bring them online.

By keeping the steam plant at "Hot Standby", you can bring the engineroom online faster. Pretty fast online all things considered. But still awhile. Hot standby means you are using fuel to keep the boilers hot. So, you don't have to heat up all that water. But, the steam pipes and engines are cold. If you were to just slam open the valves, steam would go into the steam pipes, and the cold pipes would condense some of the steam to water. These water droplets would travel down the pipes at approx. the speed of sound. And every bend would cause the droplets to slam into the pipe. This is called "water hammer". I've experienced this at least once. It sounded like someone was dropping destroyers on top of our hull. It also made solid metal pipes physically move. I actually dove for the deck (in the machinery room) and said "WHAT THE ****?". Everyone laughed.
Water droplets moving at that speed, can also damage or destroy the main engine turbines and the electrical generating turbines.
So, time is spent, to crack open the valves, slowly warming the pipes. Also there are traps/drains that are constantly used to eliminate the condensed water. Also, you have to start drawing a vacuum in the condenser, get the feedwater and condensate pumps running.
This is what takes time to warm up engineering from Hot Standby.


Then there is a "Cold" engineroom. Boilers and engineroom both are at room temperature.
So, you have to start heating up the Boilers. Have you ever seen what happens when you throw an ice cube into hot water? It fractures/shatters. This is heat stress.
So, you have to bring the Boilers up at various rates, depending on the temperature. The hotter they get, the faster you can heat. Normally, you have to follow peacetime rates. Obviously if the bombs are dropping, you risk the boilers by heating as fast as you can. Your chances of death by bomb are more than the chances you stress the plant too much at the wrong time.
This can take HOURS.
The advantage of Cold, is that more maintenance can be done, and decreased fuel costs. Also requires less watchstanders, so the crew gets more rest.




I hope I didn't bore you too much.

 

[Sylvain]

I read a pretty good article the other day outlining why it was a mistake for the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor. It basically stated that if the attack had not occurred, even with the Japanese aggression taking place elsewhere in the Pacific that the impact would be so minimal to U.S. interests that even if the U.S. had been drawn into the conflict it wouldn't have been near the effort that was undertaken to avenge the attack on Pearl Harbor. The conclusion was that sometimes the best course of action is no action. Not being a military historian it seemed plausible to assume the war in the Pacific would have played out much differently had the Japanese maintained their concentration in the western Pacific.

Who knows, there might still be a LOT of meatballs flying over various Pacific islands to this day!

Why? Because Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
End of article.

 

[actaeon277]

Well, it's easy to say it was a mistake in hindsight.
So was Operation Market Garden. In hindsight.

 

[Thor]

It's always easier to spot the bad ideas when you lose...

 

[NKBJ]

I read a pretty good article the other day outlining why it was a mistake for the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor. It basically stated that if the attack had not occurred, even with the Japanese aggression taking place elsewhere in the Pacific that the impact would be so minimal to U.S. interests that even if the U.S. had been drawn into the conflict it wouldn't have been near the effort that was undertaken to avenge the attack on Pearl Harbor. The conclusion was that sometimes the best course of action is no action. Not being a military historian it seemed plausible to assume the war in the Pacific would have played out much differently had the Japanese maintained their concentration in the western Pacific.

Who knows, there might still be a LOT of meatballs flying over various Pacific islands to this day!

The Grand Area Plan was actually a prewar (not post-war) long range strategy for the isolated power base of North America to basically end up in overseer / enforcer role for everything from the Adriatic to the Dutch East Indies, an outgrowth of the British plans for their global confederacy. To achieve those ends is why the Japanese were manipulated into striking the US. That's how the game is played. The planning was ongoing and activated for real with Japan's split with the League of Nations, so they got whacked. You know, like what got did to the royal family in Russia for opposing London.
Ever read about how Trotsky's 300 were trained and financed by the northeastern establishment, then shipped back to Europe for the overthrow? Now that the Russian government has agreed to cooperate with the church in investigating the ritual murder of their king perhaps some additional light will be shone upon the matter.