And the aircraft are from carrier Shangri-La, which was named for FDR's joke about the source of the Doolittle Raid, which provoked the Japanese into attacking Midway.
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ETA: that's got to be the largest combatant ever named for a joke.

Is that BB-60?

BB-59.

Funny how that works isn't it?

It has a secondary function as a leaf spring

USS Massachusetts. I'm a Masshole by birth.

PFC Hester, a Marine in the 7th War Dog platoon on Iwo Jima naps while Butch stands guard. Feb. 1945
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Is that comm wire leading into his hole?

Looks like it and he may very well have the field phone handset in his hand.

Ammunition Ship USS Mount Hood, 459', 14,000 tons
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November 10 1944 in the Admiralty Islands, Mount Hood exploded without warning while surrounded by small craft unloading 3,800 tons of munitions, imprudently anchored in the midst of numerous repair and service ships in harbor
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The explosion blasted a trench 50' wide by 1,000' long by 40' deep in the harbor floor.  The largest piece of the ship found was 16 by 10 feet, driven into the trench floor.  The remains of 329 men were never found.  18 Mount Hood crewmen who had just been landed ashore to take two of them to the brig for court martial were knocked off their feet but otherwise unharmed - the charges were later dropped.
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350 yards away every man topside of repair ship USS Mindanao was killed, 23 dead and 174 wounded
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Mindanao's crew were busy repairing minesweepers tied up on the lee side of the explosion:
On the morning of the explosion, I had started to work early with a new helper who had been assigned to me. His name was Italo Skortachini, an Italian kid, from New York, I think. There were six minesweepers tied alongside our ship for routine maintenance and repairs, and I was on the outermost of these minesweepers, and Italo was holding a heavy piece of metal for me to weld on a damaged railing of this minesweeper. When the blast happened, I was temporarily knocked unconscious for a second or two. I know that it was very brief because debris hadn't started falling from the sky yet.


The blast was so strong that it blew off most of my clothes except my underwear, including my shoes. The first thing that I saw was half of Italo's body on one side of the deck and the other half on the other side. It could have been the sheet of metal that he was holding for me that cut him in half. When I got to my feet, the captain of the minesweeper came out of his cabin and was looking toward my ship, and a flying piece of steel came through the air and impaled him like a spear to the cabin wall, It was in the center of his chest., and he gasped a little bit and then seemed to die.


Debris began to fall from the sky at this time. A large artillery shell fell on the deck, right at my feet, just as a crew member of the minesweeper came up from below. All of the minesweepers were made of wood, so as not to attract magnetic mines as the ship went about its work clearing minefields. The shell did not penetrate the heavy wooden deck of the minesweeper, and just lay there at our feet. I looked at him, and he looked at me. He asked, "Should we run?" I said, "Nobody can run that fast if it blows up. Let's throw it overboard." And that's exactly what we did, expecting to be blown to bits at any second. Meanwhile, he said that there were dead men below, the ship had split open, and we were starting to sink. There were dead and dying and drowning people all around us at this point.


SAR boats churn up the oil slick around Mindanao, the six damaged minesweepers are still tied up.  Twenty-two small craft and boats were sunk, eighteen larger ships were damaged to some degree, including the escort carriers USS Saginaw Bay and USS Petrof Bay, a destroyer, four destroyer escorts, and several large auxiliaries including a second ammunition ship engaged in unloading and an oil tender.  Damaged amphibious assault ship and DE at the top of the photo.
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The board of inquiry found:

That ammunition was being roughly handled in all parts of the ship.
That boosters, fuzes, and detonators were stowed together in one hold in a manner contrary to regulations governing transportation of military explosives.
That broken rockets from which some of the powder was spilled had been stowed in two of the holds.
That safety regulations for handling ammunition were not posted in conspicuous places about the ship, and there was a general lack of instruction to the crew in safety measures.
That pyrotechnics and napalm gel incendiaries were stowed in an open temporary wood and tarpaper hut on deck under hazardous conditions near the hatch to the Number 3 or 4 holds.
That there was evidence that fuzes, detonators, and other ammunition were accepted on board which were definitely defective and should have been destroyed or disposed of by dumping in deep water.
That the fire hose was not laid out. There was evidence that fire drills were infrequently held.
That there was a lack of enforcing the prohibition of smoking in boats alongside the ammunition vessel.

Nimitz's comment is fascinating:
Interestingly, Fleet Admiral Nimitz's endorsement of the board of inquiry findings noted, "It is the opinion of the Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet that the question of negligence is not involved but rather that the technical mistakes by the above named officers [which are redacted] were errors in judgment resulting from a keen desire to meet necessary military commitments and move on with the progress of the war. The exigencies of war will always require the acceptance of certain operational hazards."

WW2Today
History.Navy.mil

When USS Trout arrived at Pearl Harbor and this valuable horde was unloaded it came up one gold bar short.  That bar, worth something like $45k in 1942 became the object of the most meticulous search of a Naval vessel during the war.  

The bar was found.

In the galley. The ship's cook was using it as a paperweight.  

Per Silent Victory by Clay Blair, Jr.

If you've not read this book, you need to.  It gives at least a summary of every war patrol in the Pacific, plus longer sections on patrols with specific events (e.g., Darter and Dace in the prelude to the Battle of the Philippines), or topics affecting the force as a whole (e.g., code breaking, shitty torpedoes).

Do you know who commanded ABSD 2?

Commander Joseph Rochefort.

If you know your Pacific War history, yes, that Commander Rochefort.

The one that was a Japanese linguist who led the cracking of the JN 25 code that helped win the Battle of Midway.  

To give you an idea of his ability as a Japanese linguist, of the five hundred to one thousand messages per day that were being deciphered by the HYPO codebreakers at Pearl Harbor in the run up to Midway, Rochefort was personally translating more than one hundred of them.

Commander Layton, Nimitz' PACFLT Intelligence Officer, trusted him so much that when Rochefort called Layton on May 14, 1942, to say that he had translated part of a message which included the words “invasion force”, Layton knew it was legitimate.  But the message also include an unknown reference, AF, indicating a location. But where was AF? Rochefort was convinced by other decoded messages that the location was Midway.

Commander John Redman [a DC swamp creature back then], who commanded OP 20 G in DC, refused to believe that Midway was the next Japanese target, and saying the real target was the American West Coast; everything else was merely a decoy.

Nimitz agreed with Rochefort’s analysis and ordered three aircraft carriers to return from the South Pacific. This pissed Redman and his brother (also a swamp creature) off no end, and they wrote Rochefort's name down in their little book of those deserving their wrath, and underlined it twice. Midway was covertly warned of the threat. The Seventh Air Force at Hawaii was placed on alert, its B17 bombers loaded with bombs ready to strike enemy ships.  The battle damaged USS Yorktown, fresh in for the Battle of the Coral Sea, saw dockworkers, metal workers, shipwrights, and welders perform a Herculean effort to repair what should have been at least three months work in a U.S. drydock, in just under three days, without a drydock. Civilian workers with unfinished but critical tasks sailed with her into harm's way.

Nimitz trusted Rochefort so much that when he devised a plan to have Midway instructed, via undersea cable, to send an uncoded message that the island’s water distillation plant, which was responsible for the island’s water supply, had broken down, Nimitz said "Do it." Two days after the message was sent, the Japanese reported that the AF needed to be resupplied with fresh water.

On the night Nimitz issued final orders, Rochefort showed up at the meeting to let them know that HYPO had broken the final piece of the JN 25 puzzle; he had a message dated May 26 ordering the destroyer escorts for the Japanese troopships to arrive at Midway on June 6. Another decoded message said that the air attacks would begin northwest of the island several days before.

Rochefort’s report came in the nick of time. On May 27, the day after Nimitz' battle plan meeting, both the JN 25 code books and the additive tables were changed and radio silence was imposed by the Japanese, denying American code breakers access. But it was too late for Yamamoto. Vice Admiral Spruance's plan, built around Rochefort's analysis and endorsed by Nimitz, was posted.

And as a result, our carriers were in the right place at the right time for a few hundred brave and heroic men on the attacking US aircraft, to change the course of the war in the Pacific.  

Thanks to Commander Joseph Rochefort.

His reward?  No medals, until the end of the war when he received a Legion of Merit.  And in 1986, when he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Instead, he was kicked out of code breaking entirely.  

As Clay Blair, Jr. said in Silent Victory "Rochefort's reward for the most valuable piece of naval intelligence of the entire war in the Pacific was command of a floating dry dock."  

I believe Commander Rochefort deserved then, and still deserves today, the Medal of Honor.  Argue that his was not bravely above and beyond the call of duty when engaged in combat with the enemy, but he was in a constant battle with the real enemy, the Japanese on one side and the Navy Department swamp creatures on the other.

I first read of his efforts in Clay Blair, Jr.'s Silent Victory when I was 17.  In the decades since, as I've read more and more about code breaking in the Pacific, and the Pacific war in general I have come to this conclusion.  

Had it not been for Commander Joseph John Rochefort, USN, him, HIM, ONE FUCKING MAN, we might have lost the war against the Empire of Japan.

Interesting, what was the reason they gave for kicking him out of the code breakers?

Those Redman brothers must have been real assholes.

Actually yes I do know the story of Commander Rochefort... and that asshole Redman.

Commander Rochefort got royally screwed over.

And yes I totally agree that he deserves the Medal of Honor,  posthumously

Ilyushin Il-20 ground attack prototype.  The Russians built some ugly aircraft.

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In Silent Victory Blair stated it was because in the wake of the victory at Midway, Rochefort was asked to recommend for recognition men in the HYPO code breaking station who contributed to their success.

Rochefort, a man with a sign on his desk stating “We can accomplish anything provided no one cares who gets the credit” formed a committee to develop and forward the list of those deserving recognition.  His men put his name at the top of the list. It is doubtful Rochefort even signed the routing slip, much less read what was underneath, so little did this stuff matter to him.

But it gave the Redmans all the ammunition needed for them to sink him. “How dare he....” “His name at the top of the list...” Shitty optics to say the least, but it was what drove him out of code breaking and linguistics, and back to the backwater of the war.

Tag.  Thanks to all for this awesome thread.  I just thought I knew a bit about WWII...

Sorry gents for the outburst, but whenever I hear the story of Midway and code breaking, the actions of the Redman Brothers and their co-conspirators makes me see red.

Get and read Silent Victory.  I was so taken with that book, I wore out a hard back copy reading and rereading it.

Back to your normal messages....

Made me see red, too.

They both should have been taken on a war bonds tour, been made to stand there as charges of treason were read and their uniforms stripped of buttons, rank, decorations etc and then been turned over to the whipped up crowd

I've never heard of the "Redman Brothers and their co-conspirators"... what's this about? Links?

That strikes me as being an extremely bad idea.

101st Airborn division helmet markings.
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WOW!

I just watched this day before last and suddenly Gopher is posting what I was thinking - WOW - I loved Band Of Brothers but I never knew THAT...




Enjoy!

BIGGER_HAMMER

@Bigger_Hammer


The movie Battleground made in 1949 had Band of Brothers beat by 50 years when it comes to realistic helmet markings




327th Glider Infantry Regiment..

In fact some of the groundbreaking production methods used in Battleground was used in Band of Brothers. Almost all of the combat scenes in Battleground was filmed in a giant sound stage. They brought in tons of dirt and real trees and then dug fox holes and even made fake snow. Same method was used for the Battle of the Bulge episodes of Band of Brothers

Am I the only one who thinks naming an ammunition ship "Hood" was a bad idea with a predictable outcome?

You mean the fact that she was named after Mt. Hood, a volcano here in Oregon?

Naming ammunition ships after volcanos is sort of a tradition.

I served on the ammunition ship the USS Pyro, AE-24, second ship of the name as the first Pyro AE-1 was in Pearl Harbor Dec 7th 1941. Sister ship to mine was the USS Nitro. We had some dark humor...

As a side note; the 3rd battalion of the 506th marked their helmets wrong for the D-Day jump.  The entire battalion had the "tic" mark in the 1st battalion or 3 O'Clock position when it should have been in the 9 O'Clock position.  They can be differentiated from 1st battalion by a small white dot on the front and rear of their helmets that the others did not have.  This was corrected prior to the Market-Garden jump.

A good example of a 3/506 D-Day helmet with the misplaced tic mark and white dot on the front is in the image below.

Wasn't one of them homeported at NWS Earle in the '80s?

It's called 'careerism'.

There's a lot more of that than you think. A LOT more.

I had an officer thank me for quietly correcting him once when he made a mistake. He even publicly said I  had pointed something out.

I had another that went after me every chance he got until the BnXO found out about it. He had my back and TWO things going for him. Rank and size and would use either or both of them to protect his people.

1942, GE plant, machinist uses a hand file to put the finishing touches on the single most expensive component of a ship, the reduction gear

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Silent Victory is one of the books permanently in my bathroom library. I've probably read it 20 times. Up Front also holds the honor.

I was on the Pyro I in the 80s - she was home ported at Concord Naval Weapon Station.

Good read on the Redman's here:

The Enemies List

Anyone know where the Redman brothers are buried?  On my next trip to the mainland I'd like to make a side trip to piss on their graves.

Must have been the Nitro then.

I was stationed at Ft Monmouth and the Navy used our enlisted housing area.  You could tell when the Nitro was pulling in because it looked like moving day with all the boyfriends moving out.

We called them West Pac widows. Faithful to the hubbies the first month, growling the second, and prowling the port bars by the third. Of course, we were humping foreign whores on foreign shores, too. Many reasons I never got married while in the service.

In Groton they were called Boomer Windows.

My Uncle Don on the wing;he was crewchief........I believe this is an A-36 Apache......somewhere in Florida

Finns, 1944
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Always wondered what those gears looked like.  THANKS!

Fw 190 prototype



Fw 190A3 stolen by the Brits

Not really "stolen", more like gifted.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Thanks for the link, I was going to post it.

Luftwaffe Focke-Achelis Fa 223 Drache (Dragon) transport helicopter

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Sikorski YR-4B
1st Air Commando Group after first combat evacuation, Burma-1944

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A jeep pulling a 37mmM3 gun near New River North Carolina, 1941.

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Reminds me of the opening scene of the TV show 'Rat Patrol' of the jeep jumping over the sand dune.
Guy standing in the back manning the MG had to have suffered a severe whiplash.
@ 52 seconds in.
***ETA*** Guess it wasn't as bad as 6 year old me at the time remembered!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZcbifYqpGc

3rd picture of the Shinano

Taken by a high altitude aircraft at an unknown date, the enormous carrier can be seen in Yokosuka’s Dry Dock No.6

@Mal_means_bad

USS Duane has to be USCGC Duane WPG33. Do you have any more info on this, or where it came from?