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For the WWII Nerds - Best admirals voted by panel of peers in 1942


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Posted
12 hours ago, UpperWestside said:

Last week I began a masters program through Arizona State University. It will give me a masters degree in World War II history. I am thankful that I can do this remotely and that the degree is the only one of its kind offered by a university in the US. 
 

It is done in conjunction with the National World War II museum in New Orleans and there are lectures on there from people that run that museum, which is pretty awesome. The faculty that run this program at Arizona State is from across the World War II spectrum and the knowledge I will gain with this degree will serve me well in my travels in the South Pacific countries I will be living in at various points in the future. 
 

I am going to transfer my current job to Honolulu starting in January. I am doing this because I want access to the South Pacific nations and also because I want to work at a museum in Hawaii to help further the knowledge I can learn on this journey. I wish there were more schools with a curriculum based on this war, but this fits the bill for my interests and what I will spend the rest of my life doing. Just gotta remember how to do that Fork’em Devils hand sign! 

Go Devils

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Posted
10 hours ago, BillyGoatHill said:

I've told this story on Shag/Surly before but when I was a freshman in college, my history professor had us read (our choice) 3 books and do a paper on each for midterms. My grandmother's 3 brothers all served in the Pacific ( 2 Marines and a Navy SeaBee) so I chose to read some books about the Pacific campaigns, one was on Tarawa. Upon getting the reports back, besides the grade on each was a small note on the Tarawa paper. "Good report. By the way, I was there" was in red ink. 

After, I found out that my professor lived in my neighborhood. I was able to have some conversations with him (my Dad also as he served 20 yrs in the Navy) and found out that he rarely talked about his experiences there or other battles, but he did with us. One thing that he said (and has stuck most with me) is that him, his division of Marines, and thousands of other soldiers and sailors were cruising to Japan to be part of the initial invasion when they heard about the bombs and the Japanese surrender.

He distinctly said that he was never so happy. With all that he had previously been through, his time was most likely up and he wasn't going to make it out of Japan without being seriously wounded or most likely killed.  He said those 2 bombs saved his life. 

 

My Dad was an 18 yr old Hospital Corpsman onboard the USS Wisconsin for the last 6 months of the war. He didn't talk about his service much but he did say that he was scheduled to be part of the first invasion wave. I don't know if he really knew that or if it was conjecture on his part but he always said that those bombs likely saved his life.

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Posted
8 hours ago, MissingInAction said:

Come and See.

It's torture.

Dude, WTF. That was the worst thing I have ever seen and I watched Serbian movies. But it did have everything expected from WW2  Russia.

1- Crappy proletariat music.

2- Shitty terrain with people living in hovels.

3- Sort of hot weird chick.

5- Soldier who just wants to get drunk.

Wait, so it is modern russia? I am confused.

DO NOT WATCH THAT MOVIE. The film maker should be ashamed. So should whatever film festival showed it. I need some Dirty Dozen just to reset my senses.

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Posted
10 hours ago, Gil Bang said:

Well, nothing "Hollywood" was dumber than that piece of fucking dogshit "Dunkirk", where the spitfire pilot glided past all his peeps to land on the beach in the lap of the Germans.  What a shit movie that was.  

Never saw that one.

Posted
49 minutes ago, InkaUtexas said:

Dude, WTF. That was the worst thing I have ever seen and I watched Serbian movies. But it did have everything expected from WW2  Russia.

1- Crappy proletariat music.

2- Shitty terrain with people living in hovels.

3- Sort of hot weird chick.

5- Soldier who just wants to get drunk.

Wait, so it is modern russia? I am confused.

DO NOT WATCH THAT MOVIE. The film maker should be ashamed. So should whatever film festival showed it. I need some Dirty Dozen just to reset my senses.

It may be the best vision of human suffering put to film.

The little Nazi collaborator may have been the most disturbing part of the film.

Posted (edited)
4 hours ago, Shoxthemonkey said:

My Dad was an 18 yr old Hospital Corpsman onboard the USS Wisconsin for the last 6 months of the war. He didn't talk about his service much but he did say that he was scheduled to be part of the first invasion wave. I don't know if he really knew that or if it was conjecture on his part but he always said that those bombs likely saved his life.

I think there was an inevitable sense that those serving in the Pacific War knew that they would not be going home before an invasion took place of the home islands. The amount of casualties that would have resulted from an attack on the Tokyo Plain alone would have been staggering. Those bombs saved tens of thousands of American lives. Japan was ready to sacrifice their entire country and its people rather than surrender. My own grandfather was called into service with the navy (Was late in the war and he never got deployed) and I have often thought that had the war continued he would’ve been sent to be part of that invasion force. That could’ve been it for him before he even left his teenage years. 

Edited by UpperWestside
Posted (edited)

navy corpsmen and doctors saved my grandfather’s life in the pacific. 

a japanese machine gun nest almost cut him half. a corpsman jumped on him asap and started working on him. quickly taken to a field hospital on the beach, then a ship. many surgeries and 8 months hospital / rehab in australia. he lived a long and happy life 

Edited by tx 3 putt
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Posted
On 9/4/2024 at 8:47 AM, UpperWestside said:

I think there was an inevitable sense that those serving in the Pacific War knew that they would not be going home before an invasion took place of the home islands. The amount of casualties that would have resulted from an attack on the Tokyo Plain alone would have been staggering. Those bombs saved tens of thousands of American lives. Japan was ready to sacrifice their entire country and its people rather than surrender. My own grandfather was called into service with the navy (Was late in the war and he never got deployed) and I have often thought that had the war continued he would’ve been sent to be part of that invasion force. That could’ve been it for him before he even left his teenage years. 

Some estimates where close to a million.  

Posted
On 11/8/2023 at 9:00 AM, RPM said:

My Dad was the coxswain of a Higgins Boat at Iwo Jima. He also knew how to get around 30% more horsepower out of a 6-71 Detroit.

 

Same same for my grandfather. Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima (silver star), Okinawa. 

At Iwo Jima his boat was sunk (killing or drowning almost everyone onboard), he swam to shore, towing a Marine with him, hitched a ride back to the troopship, hosed the blood out of another higgin's boat whose coxswain was killed in the previous run, and was right back at it. 

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Posted
9 minutes ago, BabaYaga said:

Some estimates where close to a million.  

I probably am on the lower end of expected casualties with my quoted estimate. Yes I do think that it could have hit seven digits in American casualties alone. While the civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki obviously suffered mightily from those two bombs being dropped, it did bring the war to a far shorter end. The casualties in both civilian and military lives for Japan would’ve been in the millions had Hirohito not made that tape.

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Posted (edited)
5 minutes ago, High Plains Drifter said:

 

Same same for my grandfather. Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima (silver star), Okinawa. 

At Iwo Jima his boat was sunk (killing or drowning almost everyone onboard), he swam to shore, towing a Marine with him, hitched a ride back to the troopship, hosed the blood out of another higgin's boat whose coxswain was killed in the previous run, and was right back at it. 

What service was he in (Navy / USCG) and did he attend any of the Iwo Jima Survivors gatherings in Wichita Falls? Good chance they may have met.

Edited by RPM
Posted
4 minutes ago, High Plains Drifter said:

 

Same same for my grandfather. Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima (silver star), Okinawa. 

At Iwo Jima his boat was sunk (killing or drowning almost everyone onboard), he swam to shore, towing a Marine with him, hitched a ride back to the troopship, hosed the blood out of another higgin's boat whose coxswain was killed in the previous run, and was right back at it. 

The dedication to duty of that generation is unmatched in our history. Story after story after story of young men doing all that they could, often to their last full measure, to help their brothers-in-arms. Your grandfather must have been quite the man. 
 

Posted
21 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

navy corpsmen and doctors saved my grandfather’s life in the pacific. 

a japanese machine gun nest almost cut him half. a corpsman jumped on him asap and started working on him. quickly taken to a field hospital on the beach, then a ship. many surgeries and 8 months hospital / rehab in australia. he lived a long and happy life 

Those corpsman were some of the unsung heroes of so many of the Pacific War battles. The Japanese were trained to target them and would regularly leave wounded American soldiers in the open just to draw in and kill the corpsman and fellow soldiers that would rush to their aid. Just horrific stuff. Glad your grandfather made it home and that you are here to be able to share stories about him.

Posted (edited)
14 minutes ago, UpperWestside said:

The dedication to duty of that generation is unmatched in our history. Story after story after story of young men doing all that they could, often to their last full measure, to help their brothers-in-arms. Your grandfather must have been quite the man. 
 

I feel my Dad's story is unique, but then everyone's was. My Dad did take an unique path. Joined after Pearl Harbor (lied about his age), went to boot camp in Nawlins, then went to Dog Training school in Tennessee. I don't have it, but there's a picture of a huge St. Bernard loving on Dad. After training they were assigned to Shore Patrol, but he was quickly transferred to a USCG Sub Chaser in the Atlantic. They had a few engagements and claimed 1 sunk. 

He was promoted and transferred to the Pacific Theater. He became Coxswain of an LCVP (Higgins Boat) assigned to a Coastie LST when they hit Iwo Jima. He made continuous runs with troops and supplies. until the battle was over.

If you are familiar with King of the Hill, they modelled Hank's Dad after mine. Except for the shins thing, it's a perfect copy.

Edited by RPM
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Posted
15 minutes ago, RPM said:

What service was he in (Navy / USCG) and did he attend any of the Iwo Jima Survivors gatherings in Wichita Falls? Good chance they may have met.

 

He was navy. I don't know if he attended any Iwo Jima survivor gatherings, but he did go to his troop ship reunions (USS Millet iirc) every time they had one, pretty much up until he died. His troop ship was in Tokyo Bay at the signing of the Japanese surrender. 

 

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Posted (edited)
4 hours ago, RPM said:

I feel my Dad's story is unique, but then everyone's was. My Dad did take an unique path. Joined after Pearl Harbor (lied about his age), went to boot camp in Nawlins, then went to Dog Training school in Tennessee. I don't have it, but there's a picture of a huge St. Bernard loving on Dad. After training they were assigned to Shore Patrol, but he was quickly transferred to a USCG Sub Chaser in the Atlantic. They had a few engagements and claimed 1 sunk. 

He was promoted and transferred to the Pacific Theater. He became Coxswain of an LCVP (Higgins Boat) assigned to a Coastie LST when they hit Iwo Jima. He made continuous runs with troops and supplies. until the battle was over.

If you are familiar with King of the Hill, they modelled Hank's Dad after mine. Except for the shins thing, it's a perfect copy.

These stories are all unique and deserving of being told to wider audiences. Your father’s war experience was harrowing yet he survived to share it with others. We have lost almost all of the veterans from this war and the only way their service record and stories will stay alive is to be retold by children and grandchildren as well as hopefully having been written down. Your father’s experience of potentially having sunk one U-boat may have come from the women in a book I just finished today called Code Girls. Their ability to break the U-boat’s special Enigma code machine was incredible. In doing so they may have and likely did contribute to your father’s safety while out on patrol in the Atlantic waters.
 

Everything we have as a country right is a direct result of this war. All the postwar innovations across the spectrum of America were paid for in the blood of fallen soldiers across thousands of miles of ocean, Europe, Africa and Asia. As a country we just cannot forget what was fought for during that war. We absolutely have to remind others that we are here now because of those people that served on foreign soil.

I had a teacher one time who was a friend of Mike Judge so I absolutely am familiar with Hank. 

Edited by UpperWestside
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  • 4 months later...
Posted

A new co-worker I have out here came up and introduced himself on my first day. We were talking and I am telling him why I moved out here and that it wasn’t necessarily to live on an island. Once I mentioned World War II he relates to me how he is not a big fan of Patton or Monty and whatnot as he is talking to me about Europe while also talking about the old pillboxes around the island here you can hike to.

The reason he was talking about Europe and that Patton got too much credit was because his great-great uncle is Anthony “Nuts” McAuliffe. We are the same age and you can 100 percent tell that he’s a McAuliffe and not just because it’s his last name. At a certain point in life I chalked up all of these seemingly random meetings with folks as not being random anymore, this one included. We talked about Bastogne for a bit and that he is the first generation in the McAuliffe family to not join the military. I had another visit with someone two weeks back whose uncle was among the Army Rangers at Anzio which is a an entirely different American war experience altogether.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Posted (edited)

So one of the reasons I moved this direction while doing my masters coursework is because the history I am interested in with World War II has to do with the Pacific theater. One place I knew I wanted to visit (It will be multiple visits to take it all in) is the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. I know many of you have been there and yesterday I decided to go. It was as serene and peaceful a place as I have ever stepped foot in, cemetery or not. I took some pictures and I will post more later, but this grave was one I wanted to pay my respects to. What a journey he had in his forty plus years of life.Not too hard to find and there is a computer outside the visitor center where you can print out locations of graves you want to see. I don’t think I have to explain this guy to anyone reading this thread. Buried between two unknown soldiers is absolutely fitting since he was their voice and their friend.

IMG_2389.thumb.jpeg.a7e98430bec195de142c0c02775a1ee8.jpegIMG_2388.thumb.jpeg.9d70c3be764367946fd19adf790a8e3d.jpeg

Edited by UpperWestside
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Posted

What is amazing to me about that cemetery is how quiet it is.   For those who have never been, it's nestled in the in the Punchbowl overlooking Honolulu and the ocean.   Arlington and this cemetary are absolutely beautiful and definitely provide their own setting for honoring our dead.

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Posted

Oh my gosh so quiet. Just the small birds chirping and that was it. The layout is incredible and seeing the view of Honolulu and Diamond Head is pretty cool. I liked seeing the maps up at the top of the stairs of the battles where so many of these Americans met their end. This is a first class place for our war heroes to be laid to rest in.

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Posted
On 11/7/2023 at 6:53 PM, UpperWestside said:

War has a way of showing who is the best at their job and often it is not the ones with the best resume going in. 

I quoted this and repped it not just for the accuracy of Naval shipment and the military in general it just holds true in so many other areas as well. Yes, more so in the military than others due to extremes of failure and success but.. 

From execution of a installation/build, to execution of a design project, to figuring out code on a urgent program to competition on a field of play regardless of sport.

You might have the resume and/or measurables that appear great on paper or "practice" but when the rubber hits the road and the stress overwhelming there are those that just perform and those who fall apart. It's truly impossible to ever know who is which until the moment occurs.

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Posted
2 hours ago, BurntEyes said:

I quoted this and repped it not just for the accuracy of Naval shipment and the military in general it just holds true in so many other areas as well. Yes, more so in the military than others due to extremes of failure and success but.. 

From execution of a installation/build, to execution of a design project, to figuring out code on a urgent program to competition on a field of play regardless of sport.

You might have the resume and/or measurables that appear great on paper or "practice" but when the rubber hits the road and the stress overwhelming there are those that just perform and those who fall apart. It's truly impossible to ever know who is which until the moment occurs.

I completely agree with that for sure. I read a book recently called “The Worst Military Leaders in History.” It was essays written by historians on some of the worst examples of military leadership and then separated into different categories. Some were well known examples like Santa Anna and General Custer and some there were obscure ones. All selections were subjective of course, but cases were made on each as determined by temperament and decisions made etc. What they all shared in common was the ability, or lack thereof, to meet a momentous decision in a war or single battle and instead just make the absolute worst decision or decisions they could possibly make. It goes back to your point about “when the rubber meets the road”. Really interesting read and not everyone who reads it will agree on all of them being bad.

IMG_2408.thumb.jpeg.191359b1b2b7a91131b32d927a7b0e8d.jpeg

 

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