Monday, September 9, 2019

There will always be an England*

Well....That sucks!  Had a pretty good post here and made a small edit that required doing the edit in HTML mode.  Made a mistake and when I hit the undo button, the whole post went away.  Thanks, Google Blogger!.


So...Here we go with the Cliff Notes edition. 


Found an interesting History Guy Video on YouTube, and did a little deeper dive into the story.  
Source

It all starts with a guy named John C. England.  He was born in Missouri, but grew up in Alhambra CA.  Graduated as President of his HS Class, attended Pasadena City College.  Upon Graduation there, he enlisted in the US Naval Reserve.  Went to basic training and upon graduation, enrolled in the Naval Midshipmen School.  Upon graduation there, was commissioned an Ensign.  Reported to the Navy's Radio school and upon graduation there reported to his first assignment, USS Oklahoma (BB-37).  Somewhere, during all this schooling, he got married and had a child although he hadn't met the child as of yet..
Source

As his wife and child were due to arrive in a few days, he swapped shifts so he could spend time with them and get them settled in.

He took the shift on December 7th, 1941.

The Oklahoma is hit with two torpedoes almost immediately in the attack and begins to capsize.  She has two more torpedo hits and continues to roll.  The article I read estimated that she had a total of 8 hits during the attack.
Source


Ensign England manages to make it out of the ship's interior, but realizes the other people in the room didn't follow.  He makes three trips back inside and brings back a wounded crewmember each time.  

He returns below for a fourth time but does not return.  His remains were recovered and buried in a mass grave.**
Source

 To honor his memory, a Buckley Class Destroyer Escort was commissioned.  It was launched in Sept '43, commissioned in December and sailed for Espiritu Santo in Vanuatu in March of 44 with Commander W.B. Pendleton in command.
Mother and Sister christened the ship. Source


The first few weeks were spent doing escort duty between Espiritu Santo and Guadalcanal, but in Mid-May, things got "Fast and Furious".

The US had decoded a radio message tasking the Japanese Submarine I-16 to resupply troops on the southern tip of Bougainville.  Astute Chanters will recognize this submarine as the one that brought the mini-subs to participate in the attack on Pearl Harbor.

In any case, USS England along with USS George and USS Raby are tasked to intercept her.  On May 19th, the sub is spotted by aircraft and the 3 ship are vectored to the area.  That afternoon, USS England gets sonar contact and executes a Hedgehog attack which misses.  She attacks again and gets a single hit.  Attacks 3 and 4 have no hits also.  Attack 5 scores 4-6 detonations and is followed by a large underwater explosion which lifts USS England's fantail out of the water. 
I didn't know what these were when I visited USS Stewart.  I do now


The very next day, the US intercepts another message detailing plans to deploy 7 Japanese submarines across the expected line of advance for US Aircraft Carriers.  The three ships are sent to intercept.  USS George gets the first contact on radar on 22 May and makes an attack, but misses.  USS England attacks, misses, reattacks and scores at least 3 hits, followed by a large underwater detonation.

It's now 23 May, the three ships are still searching out the submarines.  USS Raby gets a radar contact then picks the sub up on sonar.  Makes 4 Hedgehog attacks and misses all.  USS George makes 4 attacks and misses.  USS England makes an attack, misses, reattacks and scores 10-12 hits followed by breaking up noises and an underwater explosion.
Source

24 May, USS George makes radar contact.  USS England picks the sub up on sonar and make her attack with 3-5 hits.  Breaking up noises are heard on Sonar.

The threesome is now low on fuel, ammo and other supplies, so starts to return to port.  Enroute to the resupply base on the 26th. USS Raby gets a radar contact,  USS England soon achieves both Radar and Sonar contact, makes her attack and scores 4-6 detonations followed by a large oil slick.

Upon resupply, the threesome returns to the area to continue operations.  In addition to the these three,  USS Spangler joins the party.  On May 30,  a surfaced sub is detected and  attacked.  16 Hedgehog attacks were made over the period of 25 hours with no success.  USS England had been held in reserve.  Finally, out of frustration, the Division Commander radios "Oh, Hell, Go ahead, England"..  USS England makes her attack and scores 6-10 detonations followed by a major explosion.

  6 Japanese submarines in 12 days, I think the Ensign's death was adequately avenged.

Unfortunately, in May of '45, USS England is doing picket duty off the coast of Kerama Retto a large anchorage used by the US in support of the Okinawa invasion.  While on patrol, the ship is attacked by 3 Japanese dive bombers.  The ship's AAA scores hits on one, but it crashes into the ship just below the bridge.  The crew manages to conduct damage control and get the ship into Kerama Retto.  However, 37 crewmembers died and 25 were wounded.  The ship will eventually make it back to the US for extensive repair, but the war ends and she will eventually be decommissioned and scrapped.
Source


The ship received a Presidential Unit Citation for her actions in May of '44 and her Captain would receive the Navy Cross.
Commander Pembleton
Source

Presidential Unit Citation:
"For outstanding performance in combat against enemy forces from May 19 to 31, 1944. Utilizing to the full all available weapons and equipment the USS ENGLAND skillfully coordinated her attacks with other vessels and with cooperating aircraft, striking boldly and with exceptional precision at the enemy.
In a sustained series of attacks, she destroyed six hostile ships within twelve days effecting this devastating blow to enemy operations during a particularly crucial period and disrupting attempts by the enemy to supply or evacuate key units.
By this heavy loss to the enemy the ENGLAND contributed substantially to unmolested advance of the United States Fleet pointing toward subsequent seizure and occupation by our forces. 
A gallant and daring fighter, superbly ready combat, the ENGLAND has achieved an outstanding record of success, reflecting the highest credit upon her gallant officers and men and the United States Naval Service."


Here's the Video that got this post started.




*The title quote is from Admiral Ernest King saying "There will always be an England...in the US Navy."  A second USS England (CG-22) served from '62 until the early 90's.  There currently is not a USS England on duty today.

Just for your musical entertainment, here is a different take on that statement.  Evidently it was a patriotic song in Great Britain during the war.




**On a somewhat happier note, in part because of the actions of Joint Task Force-Full Accounting (JTF-FA) in the early 90s in recovering and identifying Americans Missing in action in Vietnam, Ensign England's remains were positively identified in 2016 and he was reburied with his parents.

We'll call this post an SPNS.  A pilot training grading code for "Poopy*** Pattern, Nice Save". 

***Or a more scatological version of the word.



36 comments:

  1. One of the things that amazes me is how we seem to gravitate to the same blogs, and youtube channels. It's like we have a shared bookmark file. This is a neat group of curmudgeons....

    I really enjoyed that particular history guy video.

    When are you going to Schulenburg? You could do another museum tour for us... ;)

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    1. Yes, the Algorithm of Google is a wondrous thing. Heaven help you if you should ever search for the word "Crabgrass". DAMHIK

      I did also, haven't found one yet that I didn't enjoy and learn something from.

      Texas Polka Museum? Have you seen me dance? Mrs J is still laughing after I brought that up.

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    2. No, not a polka museum. Those guys made model airplanes, and they built a company making models. And they made some home built carnival rides. Very interesting. And there's good food in the area. And it's pretty and green most of the time. I sound the like the chamber of commerce.....

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    3. Ahh The Stanzel Model Aircraft Museum, that's what I get for trusting Wikipedia. Although, Mrs J is starting to talk about the Polka Museum also...

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  2. That's one big do-over! I guess cntrl-Z work didn't work.

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    1. Didn't think of that when it happened. Oh and I closed the window I was previewing on, so two strikes on the same pitch. Interestingly, other than the number of passes and hits specifics to each attack, I rewrote the post from memory. So...I guess I did learn something.

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    2. My boss is constantly losing work because he tends to close windows to find the desktop email icon so he can attach files to email, instead of using alt-tab to find Outlook, or Win+D to get to the desktop. I try and teach him, but he doesn't want to learn. He also saves EVERYTHING to his desktop so we can never access the files when he's gone (should go on the shared drive).

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    3. I didn't know the Win+D trick, nice! (Closing windows to find things? Your boss sounds like IT's nightmare client!)

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    4. Pretty much. Great boss, just aggravating habits.

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    5. The desktop is a horrible place to save things. It's probably the most fragile place in windows as it's part of your profile. Profiles frequently get corrupted. The quickest way to fix windows problems we found was to delete a person's profile and create a new one. I would explain that to people and they'd just nod their head. Yeah, Yeah Yeah, juvat. I'm a first grade teacher! You're just a tech guy. I've been doing it this way for years.

      Ya know...It's really (really, really, really) hard not to laugh when their profile gets corrupted and their data is lost. Did I mention, you can't really back up the profile effectively?

      Not that that scenario happened anytime in my 20 years with the district. Nope...Never....Well, not more than once or twice a week anyhow.

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  3. Boy, talk about ship handling and sonar contacts being dialed in over an extended period of time, that was a well-trained crew. Ensign England had guts, a capsized ship, power out probably, FOUR trips to rescue crewmates......... Good vids and sources juvat, off to see how many hedgehogs that class ship carried. Interesting read on the salvage done on the Oklahoma.

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    1. Yeah, No one can be THAT lucky for so long, there had to be considerable skill involved. Or...an ascended being along to help out.

      One would think that four trips would warrant something other than just a Purple Heart, but there probably were a lot of people doing similar things that particular morning.

      Thanks.

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  4. Great post, sounds like the fleet could use another USS England, magnificent sub killer!

    As to the undo fiasco (I saw that last night, rechecked later and saw that you had recovered, though there were a couple of pine branches stuck to the underside of your bird), when that happens, hit redo (Cntrl-y). I've noticed that Blogger doesn't know how to handle the undo command, seem to think it means undo everything since you started the post. The redo nearly always recovers it. (DAMHIK)

    Ensign England was a mensch, RIP Sir!

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    1. Thanks,

      Important safety tip there and added to my Notepad collection at the root of my Postings folder.

      Yes, he was.

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  5. Well, after losing several attempts early on, I always create my posts in Word (stop the hissing, it works,) collect my photos and videos (another Word doc, list what I'm looking for for videos and such) and then post.

    Works for me, mostly.

    Good post, very good post. Hedgehogs really changed the ASW world for the Allies. Relatively quick reload time (vs a depth charge in a Y launcher) and only pops when the individual charges strike. A definite advantage over a bomb-in-a-can.

    USS England fought as gallantly as Ensign England. See back to one of my original posts about restructuring the naming practices in the current US Navy. Basically return to WWII naming practices. Will get rid of most to all of the political hookum behind our current ships. And we won't have a Harvey Milk or an LBJ (hwack-ptooie) and I can live without a Ronald Reagan if we got rid of all the other carp.

    Our navy should always have it's ships named after it's heroes. Nuff said.

    So, juvat, when ya gonna have a post about the US Space Command/Force?

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    1. Woulda, coulda, shoulda...the story of my life. I got in a hurry and screwed it up. I usually construct the verbiage in Notepad (no hidden codes) then paste it into blogger for formatting. But, yesterday? Oh NOOOOO! I don't need no steenking backups. Insert pistol analogy here. ("You don't need a backup, until you need a backup, then you need it bad!)

      When I inserted the painting of the hedgehog shot, I wondered how they accounted for pitch and roll. Turns out one of the first improvements was to gyro stabilize it. By the end of the war, Hedgehog attacks were successful in 1 out of 5 attacks versus the depth charge 1 in 80. Source

      Hedgehogs from Space? Now that would be something.

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    2. Rods from God, or Orbital KEWs. You could make Tungsten or Depleted Uranium penetrators with guidance packages all the way from 'kill 1 vehicle really dead' to 'kill one city really dead.'

      Just wondering what their uniforms are going to look like, and if they're going to co-exist at existing USAF bases or if they're going to peel off air bases.

      And what your perspective is.

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    3. I am really looking forward to tricorders and phasers - especially phasers! Please make sure to include those in your space command posts!

      :-)

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    4. The closest I've come to space was a screwed up practice intercept of a SR-71, my pull was a few seconds late (like maybe 3), so my climb angle was too high, so I couldn't change the aircraft's direction....up. I was ballistic and couldn't do anything about it until I ran out of airspeed and mother Earth sent a gravity wave to fetch me. That having been said, I was about 25000' to short to qualify for Astronaut wings, and that was a good thing as I doubt cabin pressurization would have held up.

      So, I'm not sure I HAVE a perspective on space. As to bases, your guess is as good as mine, probably a bit of both. Depends on the budget...always depends on the budget.

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    5. Tricorders? Heck, you've got a cell phone, even the StarGate geeks had iPads. We doan need no stinking tricorders! And phasers? Like in Star Trek. Where you could dodge the beam? I want speed of Light bullets, please! No lead required, point at the bad guy and squeeze the trigger. Unless the bad guys have them also. Then....

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  6. That was a great story. During some recent research I was hoping to find something similar about a US Navy ship. The thing that got me started on the research was my finding of a cap while I was doing some cleaning at the trap range at my rifle club that I manage on Thursdays. It just happened to be in a large pile of clothing that people have left there over the centuries. Emblazoned on the front of the cap was USS Donald B. Beary FF-1085 with the picture of a warship. I became excited thinking that maybe this ship fought in WWII since we do have at least one or three members who are WWII vets. Or maybe it could be a Korean War era ship. Nope. She was a Knox-class frigate commissioned in 1972 and decommissioned in 1994. Then sold to the Turkish navy. No engagements that I could find. The good that came out of my searches was information on Vice Admiral Donald B. Beary for whom the ship was named. He fought in both WWI and WWII and later became president of the Naval War College. During the ceremony in which Japan surrendered to the Allies on board the battleship USS Missouri (BB-63) on 2 September 1945 to end World War II, Beary served as a dignitary on the staff of United States Army General of the Army Douglas MacArthur. His biography is worth a read. If it was up to me I would have named a flattop after him. And yes, I'm keeping the cap.........

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_B._Beary

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    1. Thanks for the link, interesting read.

      Admiral Beary's knowledge and skill in refining underway replenishment certainly was a major factor in enabling victory in the Pacific.

      I would definitely keep the cap.

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  7. Mr.. England was the kind of shipmate every sailor wants.
    Fair winds and following seas, sir.

    ...and that ship!
    Her crew was awesome, wrecked some pretty good plans by the enemy.
    The “small boys” were the workhorses of the fleet, just didn’t get as much ink as the capital ships.

    Great post.

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    1. Thanks Skip.

      I agree with your assessment. Mr. England would be the kind of person you'd want by your side when the fecal matter hit the fan, regardless of Service.

      Yeah, you got to wonder what they were doing differently. 25 hours, 16 passes, zero hits vs 1 and done. If I were Captain of one of the other ships, I think I'd arrange a temporary trade of an officer or two to see what I could do differently/better.

      As to small boys, that's usually the case, ain't it?

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  8. If you want something done, apparently call on England. Nice story. I’d never guess this was the Cliff Notes version. Nice thing about WordPress is that it automatically saves to drafts every 30 seconds or so.

    When you read about the circumstances of ensign England, I realize how political the medal of honor is.

    being in a capsized hall upside down would be about the most terrifying thing I can imagine

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    1. William
      Re: Medal of Honor. Yeah, I think that's going to come up in a post in the near future.

      There are a lot of things about emergencies on ships that terrify me. Your example is just one. Fire and crush depth are a couple of others.

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    2. ...one WW2 US sub torpedoed a surfaced Japanese sub silhouetted in the moonlight...much later, they could hear a sound like an explosion right through the hull...some of the Japanese crew had gotten a compartment sealed off until the water pressure crushed it...after that, they had the most alert and watchful lookouts in the navy...

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  9. ASW has always been more 'art' than science. Some crews are really good, most are average, some 'suck', and there is usually ONE in theater that is damn good! That was England. I 'doubt' her record for most subs sunk will ever be broken. And Sonar Tech Crup or Krup, is the REAL 'Jonesy' from HFRO... :-)

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    1. I agree that their record is pretty safe. Sinking 6 subs in short order would put most navies out of business. Quite probably even our own. But that was a different time.

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  10. The Brits came up with some interesting (and unconventional) weapons during WWII. As far as I can tell, the only one we picked up was the hedgehog. (Granted, a lot of the stuff they came up with was for sabotage.)

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    1. HMMMMM, ZD. An interesting thought. I may have to turn that suggestion over to our Study and Research Getter Extraordinaire, SARGE for short, for further exploration.

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    2. ...also the Sherman DD tank. The development of hedgehog is told in "Secret Weapons of World War II" (originally "The Secret War") by Gerald Pawle about the Royal Navy Department of Miscellaneous Weapons Development...they had some great ideas for weapons - and some that were comically not so much...

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    3. It's raining out (thank goodness). Now I've got something to do. Thanks

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  11. Alas, there is no ENGLAND in the US Navy, at this time. But then there are no destroyers, either. The BURKEs are really a modern version of the ATLANTA class CLAAs.
    We really need to get back in the business of making destroyers. There are a lot of nasty people out there, with KILOs. We only have so many VIRGINIAs, and they run with the CVBGs.

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    1. It's been said here several times before. "Quantity has a quality all its own." That is certainly true. Our ships, airplanes, ground units are excellent, best in the world even, but they can only be in one place at any given time.

      So...I'm in complete agreement with you, StB. Just got to stop paying for things we don't need (aka funding criminals, uh sorry, undocumented immigrants with tattoos all over their faces but good people nonetheless, even if they do occasionally murder innocent bystander).

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