That’s not funny!
We don’t have a creature to describe what kind of year this one has been! [(-D]
One of my pet peeves is people starting to say “accross” the world. A lot of people died to prove that the world is R O U N D! [soapbox]
I adored Harry Chapin. Saw his performance at the O’keefe Centre in Toronto just days before his untimely death. No disrespect intended whatsoever.
Even drove down the 30,000 pounds of bananas hill into Scanton, Pa. just to do it. Of course Scranton is a Mecca for us steamfans and that was part of it.
Dark days of WWII Jan. 1942 Fate of a Lady Ship
“Operation Drumbeat” or, “Paukenslag”, right after the opening of hostilities between the United States and Nazi Germany. U-Boot men called it “The Second Happy Time”, the US Navy was powerless to stop the U-Boot onslaught, there was almost nothing in the way of Navy assets on the East Coast.
It was so bad that Navy blimp crews had to raid all the hardware and sporting goods stores in the area of the Lakehurst NJ Naval Air Station for small arms, especially rifles.
Imagine a Navy blimp making a pass over a U-Boot with the aircrew banging away with Winchesters like a Hollywood western! It happened.
Needless to say the situation didn’t last, but while it did a lot of ships and men were lost.
Yes and I believe there was an extensive coverup and news suppression of the events at that time. The allied loss of ships and men was staggering. That’s were the loose lips sink ships campaign started.
It didn’t work. Many of the sinkings were clearly visible to large numbers of people on the shore. Very obvious that not only was our coastal shipping, particular oil shipping, an eay target but that there was little we could do about it … not only in the short run but indefinitely, at that time.
One has only to look at the history of oil trains in these years to understand just what a spectacular amount of workaround was necessary … just to avoid something that perhaps should have been easily foreseen, resulting from little more than expedience on our part.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the ‘chosen’ answer to the I’ll Never Go Hungry Again repercussions turned out to be pipeline construction (with all the associated dismal lags and delays). And who am I to say this was a wrong answer… ?
S S Caribou.
FYI.
https://www.heritage.nf.ca/articles/politics/caribou-sinking.php
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Caribou
Thank You.
The Canadian steam passenger ship Lady Hawkins was sunk by a U-66 about 260 nautical miles from the coast of the States. Another Canadian steam merchant Cornwallis was sunk by U-1230 a lot closer to the coast of US in 1944. I believe the War Department was really triggered. Cruising on a civilian ship in Atlantic or the Far East during WWII was no other than a suicide mission. Even a battleship like The HMS Prince of Wales didn’t have a chance.
Homo sapiens never failed to kill each other; generation after generation, just like all the creatures you can find in the Amazon jungle; but at least no creatures would know how to nuke their own planet.
General Norman Schwartzkopf remembered that as a boy on the Jersey shore in 1942 he could see the oil tankers burning offshore from the U-Boot attacks.
And I haven’t thought about this in years, but as a kid on the Jersey beaches in the 1960’s occasionally I’d encounter black sticky bands in the beach sand close to the waters edge. It wasn’t until years later I realized they were the oil residue from ships sunk by U-Boots 25 years earlier.
It’s been said that the two most hated vessels in maritime history are the Viking longship and the German U-Boot. Nothing else comes close.
Sadly, I never tumbled to this until you mentioned it just now.
I thought they were road tar or some other sort of dumped thing like eroded asphalt. Kids can be naive when brought up outside of war.
Jones1945-- One takeaway is that we have managed to go almost 75 years without nuking the planet. It’s getting increasingly difficult to keep the Genie in the bottle though. One nutbar off the rails fanatic group is all it takes. The question is ‘is it inevitable?’
Getting back to 1942 or any year over the oceans during wartime, well let me say how terrifying it would be out there being so vulnerable and having your family along as well. Those ships went down real fast too, sometimes a matter of minutes. Can you imagine being a worker in the engine room. The oil tankers set ablaze with the water itself on fire.
The world is run by Devils and demons who feed on this terror and death, no doubt about it.
How bad was it in 1942? I remember reading years back about an American Merchant Marine sailor who made one convoy trip that year, one only.
When his ship got back to New York he walked off and joined the US Army. He figured it was safer!
1942… This one’s for Firelock
Explanation in the link
I actually feel much better after reading your reply, Miningman. It is inevitable if the whole game is being manipulated by some sort of aloof, evil and overwhelming power. I am glad to know I am not the only one here believe this.
Peace is never a normalcy; unfortunately, it actually contrary to humanity. I tried to deny this thought when I was much younger, but the history of human civilization, which was written with blood and tears, is an undeniable fact. Just imagine how many innocent people were tortured in all kinds of war during the past 4000 years. So I accepted the cruel reality, tried my best to live a positive life.
U-boat and torpedo-carrying aircraft of the Axis were some most “demonic” killing machines ever made in human history since they were used to destroy civilian ships. I still remember the story happened on the RMS Lusitania during WWI; when the ship was sinking, people were drowned alive when trapped inside the elevator. But compared to the sinking of Soviet’s Armenia and HMT Lancastria in WWII, these cases were much more horrifying.
Well thanks for that shot of Sergeant Jiggs, Miningman!
And “Semper Fi” and “Happy Birthday” to any Marines out there.
Remember the words of President Ronald Reagan, “Some people go through life wondering if they’ve made a difference. Marines don’t have that problem.”
I guess we all did and do, in one way or another. Maybe in ways we’ll never know.
Firelock-- I understand it’s the Marines 243rd birthday. A necessary force with an outstanding history.
Jones1945-- Thank you for the kind words. It is beyond the scope of this Forum to go down these paths but let me just say there are good people out there and they know. Perhaps at some point these dark forces will be eliminated completely, maybe even time erased and all things restored. You just might be able to see and touch the S1, Q’s and T1’s. Now that’s good!
Interesting how the British government tried to deny the Lancastria tragedy but the good folk persisted and it and its victims have been honoured. The Soviet Armenia was clearly marked as a hospital ship. In both cases the Captains delayed departure significantly and sealed their fates and by doing so created a different history. Probably > 10,000 people combined perished. Denied a life and timeline of their own, who knows what could have been.
Of course the Allies sunk 2 large overcrowded Nazi evacuation ships, probably more smaller ones, in 1945, a lot of civilians, same thing. Total War!
Keep your family close, eyes and ears open.