USS Intrepid returns to Manhattan

#5
#5
Chemvol said:
...after some renovations to its military and space museum. Some nice pics of the old girl. :salute:

USS Intrepid Returns to Manhattan
Click to expand...

Great!!!!!:salute:

Here is my favorite of that era, the USS Enterprise!

She was the only carrier to survive from the beginning until the end of WWII.

I played golf for many years with a man who served on the Enterprise throughout the duration.

The "Big E", the "Galloping Ghost", was the ship that provided air cover for the daring Doolittle raid on the Japanese mainland less than six months after the Pearl Harbor attack. Doolittle's B-25s hit Tokyo and Nagoya at a time the Japanese thought they would be bombing San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle. This one act changed the course of the war probably more than anything other than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

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Lieutenant Colonel Jimmie Doolittle's B-25 Raid on Japan. 18th. of April 1942.

View the patched up hull of the Big E after the battle of the Eastern Solomons in 1942, before the Intrepid was launched.

WWII history:

Enterprise's extraordinary record can be attributed to three main factors. First, as a Yorktown-class carrier, she was blessed with a highly effective design. Fast, efficient, and maneuverable, she easily outperformed her predecessors, and held her own with the Essex-class carriers introduced in 1943.

Second, on more than one occasion, Fortune was by her side. Had her task force not been slowed by a storm in December 1941, she would have been docked in Pearl Harbor on December 7, and a prime target for the Japanese attack. Had her Air Group Commander Wade McClusky not spotted a lone enemy destroyer speeding northwest at Midway, that battle might well have ended in a Japanese victory as lopsided as the eventual American triumph.

More than anything else, however, Enterprise's historic legacy is due to the men who served in her. Even a partial roll-call reads like a Who's Who of the Pacific War. Vice Admiral William F. Halsey flew his Flag from her on the early, daring raids against Wake and the Marshalls, as well as the Doolittle Raid. From her bridge, Vice Admiral Raymond Spruance commanded Enterprise and Hornet at Midway. Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher's Flag flew from her when she was Kamikazied off Kyushu, in May 1945. Medal of Honor recipient Edward "Butch" O'Hare commanded her Air Group Six in late 1943, before dying tragically during the United States' first carrier-based night fighter mission: an ultimately successful tactic developed largely by O'Hare and Air Officer Tom Hamilton, and later refined by Bill Martin, commander of VT-10 and Night Air Group Ninety. Wade McClusky, Earl Gallaher, Richard Best and Gene Lindsey - all heroes of Midway - flew from her deck that June 4th morning.

The list continues, of those whose spirit was imprinted on Enterprise and on her men: Robin Lindsey, Daniel "Dog" Smith, William "Killer" Kane, Stanley "Swede" Vejtasa, John Crommelin, James "Jimmy" Flatley, James Ramage, Bruno Gaido, Osborne Hardison, Herschel Smith.

And then there were the thousands of "ordinary" men, who led otherwise quiet lives, but who in a way seldom seen in this day and age, put their plans and dreams on hold, their lives in jeopardy, and turned out to squarely face a lethal foe, and an assault on their values. As many as 30,000 men served in the Big E during her nine years of active service. Among them were 103 enlisted men and one officer who earned all 20 Battle Stars awarded to Enterprise and her men, as well as "plank owners" and others in her pre-war crew who brought the Big E to maturity, ready to fight from the first day of the war.

These men created in Enterprise a spirit which made her one of the most successful and beloved warships in history: a living legend and a symbol of American resolve in every task force in which she sailed.

"...the one ship that most nearly symbolizes the history of the Navy in this war."
Secretary of the Navy, James V. Forrestal

:salute:

Post war history.

The last surviving prewar carrier, the only carrier to fight at Pearl Harbor, the only surviving carrier from Midway and the Guadalcanal campaign, the ship which at one point was the only U.S. carrier left to fight in the Pacific, Enterprise was one of a handful of truly great ships in American history: Constitution, Victory, Constellation, Enterprise.

Remember the Pueblo and the Liberty!

Footnotes:

1. Former chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff Admiral Moorer tried to get the truth out about the Liberty and also reveal near eastern involvement in the Oklahoma City bombing and the shoot down of TWA flight 800.

2. After the crew of the Pueblo was captured by the North Koreans, they were assembled for propaganda photo.

Pueblo.jpg


when asked about the middle finger salute, the crew told them that was how you said 'hi folks" in America.

Only after the photos were published did the NCs find out they had been outwitted and embarrassed, they brutalized the crew a bit and broke the Captains arm but all the crew survived and were eventually repatriated to America. However an incident not remembered as well was the shoot down of a Naval EC-121 aircraft during that era by the North Koreans that resulted in the loss of the lives of 31 American servicemen.



"A man who is good enough to shed his blood
for his country is good enough to be given a square
deal afterwards. More than that no man is entitled to,
and less than that no man shall have."
--------------------- Theodore Roosevelt

The history of the race, and each individual's experience,
are thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill
and that a lie told well is immortal.
-------------------- Mark Twain
 
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