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News and Headlines...

Another one for the history buffs- a few days ago, the research vessel RV Petrel, operated by a research foundation started by the late Paul Allen, located the wreck of HIJMS Hiei, the first Japanese battleship sunk in the Second World War in over 1200' of water, to the northwest of Savo Island.

https://news.usni.org/2019/02/06/40942

https://www.facebook.com/pg/rvpetrel/photos/?tab=album&album_id=2185795551455914

Hiei was sunk during the First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. On the night of November 12-13, 1942, a Japanese task force consisting of Hiei, her sister Kirishima, a light cruiser, and 11 destroyers was on a mission to bombard the American positions at Henderson Field on the island of Guadalcanal in order to cover a convoy landing supplies & reinforcements for the Japanese forces on the island, when it was intercepted by a hastily assembled American force of 2 heavy cruisers, 3 light cruisers, and 8 destroyers at a point between Guadalcanal and Savo Island. Between a rain squall, a complex Japanese formation, and multiple miscues on the parts of both commanders, the engagement rapidly degenerated into a wild melee fought at point-blank range, which saw 2 Japanese and 4 American destroyers sunk, one American light cruiser crippled to the point she had to be scuttled, and all the rest of the American ships except for 1 light cruiser and 2 destroyers badly damaged and combat ineffective (the other light cruiser was picked off by a Japanese submarine a few days later,) while the Japanese, in addition to the two destroyers sunk, suffered severe damage to Hiei and a destroyer, moderate damage to 4 other destroyers, and light or no damage to their remaining ships. However, the American force had succeeded in preventing the bombardment and forced the Japanese to delay their reinforcement operation.

Hiei, in addition to having her superstructure shot to pieces from 5" shells, anti-aircraft autocannon, and even small arms fire from several American destroyers that passed close by the battleship, sometimes even within pistol range, was also dueled by the heavy cruiser San Francisco at a range of a little over a mile and a half, and suffered several penetrating hits from 8" shells, one of which penetrated the steering gear compartment and knocked out the primary steering gear. It took several hours for Hiei's crew to get the backup steering gear operational, by which time the sun had rose, and being thus exposed, was subjected to repeated air attacks from American aircraft- Marine bombers from Henderson Field, Navy aircraft from the carrier Enterprise, and even USAAF B-17s based out of Espiritu Santo- which scored multiple bomb hits that knocked out the backup gear, as well as several jury-rigged repairs and backups. In addition, the battleship was likely hit by two torpedoes, which may have damaged the engines on top of causing serious flooding. After several hours of arguments during the attacks, between Hiei's captain and the task force commander over whether to continue trying to save the battleship, or to abandon and scuttle her, the task force commander finally orders the ship abandoned a little after 3:30 PM local time, but the captain does not agree to follow the order until some two hours later and another air attack that damages a destroyer rendering assistance. Another hour passes, and the abandonment of the battleship is well underway, when the Japanese commander-in-chief, Adm. Yamamoto hears about it, and countermands the order to scuttle Hiei, hoping to use the hulk as a decoy to draw off further air attacks, but it is unclear as to whether the scuttling ever took place. (Given the relatively poor watertight integrity and vulnerability to flooding-caused instability of the Kongo-class, the analysis of the sinking at combinedfleet.com suggests that whether or not a scuttling was attempted would have been irrelevant, and the implication is that the only way Hiei would not have sank as a result of the air attacks would have been to have beached her.) The abandoned Hiei sank unobserved a few hours later- a force of Japanese destroyers making a sweep through the area around 1 AM saw no sign of her. 188 of her crew were killed in the battle.

The Japanese would make another attempt to bombard Henderson in order to cover a reinforcement convoy using the remaining operational ships of the first attempt, reinforced by 2 heavy cruisers, an additional light cruiser, and 4 destroyers, only to be intercepted by another American force, this time consisting of 2 battleships and 4 destroyers. At the expense of 3 destroyers sunk and the 4th destroyer, as well as one battleship suffering significant damage, the Japanese were again repulsed with the loss of a destroyer and the battleship Kirishima, blasted into a wreck by several devastatingly accurate salvos from USS Washington. Despite the failure of the second bombardment operation, the Japanese went ahead with the attempt to land the supplies and reinforcements, only to have their transports shot to pieces by American aircraft and a destroyer that had been held out of the night action after dawn. The wreck of Kirishima was located during the early 1990s during an expedition by Bob Ballard to search for the warships sunk off Guadalcanal, though until the discovery of Hiei, there was some debate over which battleship the wreck found by Dr. Ballard was in naval history circles.

Japanese_battleship_Hiei_underway_in_Tokyo_Bay_on_11_July_1942_%28NH_73075%29.jpg


Hiei in Tokyo Bay, July, 1942.

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Hiei being bombed by B-17s of the 11th Bombardment Group on November 13, 1942, taken from one of the attacking aircraft.
 
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Another notable shipwreck from the Second World War was found- fresh off their discovery of the wreck of the Japanese battleship Hiei, earlier today, the crew of the RV Petrel announced that they had found the wreck of the aircraft carrier USS Hornet (CV-8), best known as the ship from which the Doolittle Raid was launched from, in over 17,000' of water.

https://news.usni.org/2019/02/12/41053

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/uss-ho...FpIutipHApvgs8mLE0xpSEzGozMRxZPY2iDiuLWu49ctw

https://www.facebook.com/pg/rvpetrel/photos/?tab=album&album_id=2200566913312111



Commissioned in October 1941, carrying the USAAF bombers used by Col. Doolittle was Hornet's first combat mission. The carrier next saw action at the Battle of Midway, where she contributed relatively little to the action compared to her sisters, as out of her airgroup, only her torpedo bomber squadron (VT-8) managed to locate and attack the Japanese carriers, only to be wiped out, with all 15 bombers being shot down and only one pilot surviving without scoring any hits. In the mop-up phase of the battle, Hornet's dive bombers did manage to score several hits on damaged Japanese cruisers limping away. Hornet would miss the beginning of the Guadalcanal campaign due to a number of changes in the command staff concurrent with being sent to the yard for equipment upgrades and having to reconstitute her air group. Arriving in the Solomons at the end of August, 1942, her next major engagement, the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, October 26, 1942, would be her last.

In late October, 1942, the Japanese forces on Guadalcanal launched a major attack on Henderson Field, and both sides hoped to use their naval assets to support their ground troops and prevent the other from doing the same, with the result that the American and Japanese carrier forces would duel for the fourth time in the war, as task forces built around Hornet and her sister Enterprise would engage the Japanese First Air Fleet, at the time, based around the fleet carriers Shokaku, Zuikaku, and Junyo and light carrier Zuiho to the northeast of the Solomons. During the exchange of airstrikes, Hornet's planes would inflict major damage on Shokaku and a heavy cruiser, but in two separate attacks, Japanese bombers would hit Hornet with 3 torpedoes and 3 bombs, as well as a damaged Japanese dive bomber crashing into the ship. These hits would leave Hornet dead in the water, and as the American forces were having to withdraw after Enterprise had been hit hard as well, while two of the Japanese carriers were still in action, the theater commander, Admiral Halsey, ordered Hornet abandoned and scuttled a little after 3:30 that afternoon. After the crew had been evacuated, two destroyers remained behind in an attempt to scuttle the carrier, but despite the expenditure of 9 torpedoes (most of which malfunctioned) and over 400 5" rounds, the destroyers had to flee upon the approach of a Japanese surface force attempting to sweep for crippled American ships with Hornet still afloat around 8:40 PM local time. The Japanese boarded Hornet's hulk to see if she could be salvaged and search for intelligence, but after determining that recovering the carrier was impractical, decided to finish her off. It took 4 Type 93 torpedoes from Japanese destroyers to deliver the coup de grace, with Hornet finally sinking around 1:35 AM the following morning.

Hornet was the last American fleet carrier to be sunk due to enemy action.

The Battle of Santa Cruz, although a Japanese tactical victory, was a strategic failure for them, as the American fleet did succeed in preventing the Japanese navy from interfering with operations on Guadalcanal, and furthermore, effectively knocked the Japanese carrier force out of the campaign due to the heavy aircraft and aircrew losses they suffered during the battle effectively rendered the Japanese carriers combat ineffective, and the loss of so many elite aviators at Santa Cruz and earlier battles gutted the true offensive power of the Japanese navy.

640px-USS_Hornet_%28CV-8%29_underway_in_Hampton_Roads_on_27_October_1941.jpg


Hornet in October, 1941, shortly after being commissioned.

610px-Japanese_aircraft_attack_USS_Hornet_%28CV-8%29_during_the_Battle_of_the_Santa_Cruz_Islands_on_26_October_1942_%2880-G-33947%29.jpg


Hornet under attack during the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, October 26, 1942. The Japanese bomber flying toward the carrier while trailing smoke would crash into her moments later.
 
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I can not complain about the history lesson because it was cool.
 
The crew of the RV Petrel have announced their third major Second World War shipwreck, that of the carrier USS Wasp (CV-7), another casualty of the Guadalcanal Campaign. being torpedoed and sunk by a Japanese submarine 150 miles SE of San Cristobal Island, in over 14,000' of water during September, 1942. Although Petrel located the wreck on January 13, they did not publicly announce this discovery until yesterday.

https://news.usni.org/2019/03/13/wreckage-of-wwii-era-carrier-wasp-discovered

https://www.facebook.com/pg/rvpetrel/photos/?tab=album&album_id=2246845348684267

Wasp was a unique carrier, designed to use up the US Navy's remaining carrier tonnage permitted under the interwar naval limitation treaty system left over from the other 5 fleet carriers then in service, as well as the tonnage freed up by the conversion of the oldest carrier, Langley (CV-1) into a seaplane tender. What resulted was effectively a 3/4-scale version of the preceding Yorkfown-class, but with nearly the same aviation capabilities. However, in order to achieve this, there were a number of compromises, including being several knots slower than other fleet carriers, and more critically, a near total lack of torpedo protection.

Commissioned in April, 1940, Wasp spent most of her career in the Atlantic, with her first operational mission outside of normal peacetime training and patrol operations was in July, 1941, when she formed part of the escort for a convoy carrying US Marines to take over the occupation of Iceland from the British, in order to prevent Germany from gaining any foothold on the island. Afterwards, the carrier was part of the Neutrality Patrol, searching for German raiders in the western Atlantic. With the US entry into World War 2 in December, 1941, Wasp was sent to the Caribbean as a warning to any Vichy French warships that were contemplating an attempted breakout to return to France, where they would be at risk of falling under Nazi control. After a couple more months of defensive patrols, Wasp was assigned to a task force sent to reinforce the British Home Fleet in March, 1942. There, the carrier would make perhaps her most important contribution to the war, two operations in April and May, where she ferried RAF Spitfires to Malta, which were desperately needed reinforcements for the garrison there.

However, in June 1942, after the loss of two carriers at the Battles of Coral Sea and Midway, Wasp was transferred to the Pacific as the only other fleet carrier other than the three already there considered suitable for frontline duty (Ranger (CV-4) was considered a failed design, considered too slow and fragile for combat against the Japanese, and was never even considered for active deployment to the Pacific, to the point that escort carriers were seen as better units to reinforce the Pacific.) Subsequently, Wasp would support the landings on Guadalcanal, August 6-7, 1942, but missed out on the first carrier battle of the campaign, the Battle of the Eastern Solomons, August 24, being too far away to participate thanks to an unfortunately timed withdrawal to refuel.

In mid-September, most of the major units available, including Wasp, sortied in order to escort a major resupply and reinforcement convoy for Guadalcanal. A little after 2:20 PM local time, September, 15, 1942, as the escorting task force was passing near San Cristobal, and had just turned into the wind so that Wasp could recycle her defensive patrol aircraft, it was attacked by the Japanese submarine I-19, with one of the most effective torpedo spreads ever. Of the 6 torpedoes fired, one hit the battleship North Carolina (BB-55), inflicting major damage, another struck the destroyer O'Brien (DD-415) causing major structural damage that would result in the hull breaking apart and the ship sinking a month later as she limped back to the US for permanent repairs, and although 1 missed, the remaining three hit Wasp near her aviation fuel and ordnance storage with devastating results, as a series of secondary explosions wrecked the forward part of the ship and set massive fires. With most of the firefighting water mains knocked out by the explosions, the fires quickly became uncontrollable, and about half an hour after being hit, the captain gave the order to abandon ship. A little over an hour later, an escorting destroyer was ordered to scuttle the now abandoned carrier. 193 men of the carrier's crew were lost with their ship, and another 366 were wounded in the sinking.

640px-USS_Wasp_%28CV-7%29_entering_Hampton_Roads_on_26_May_1942.jpg


Wasp in May, 1942

604px-USS_Wasp_%28CV-7%29_burning_on_15_September_1942_%28fsa.8e00768%29.jpg


Wasp on fire and listing, shortly after being torpedoed.

Book of general ship's plans for Wasp, 1942. (17.7 MB PDF file)
 
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Just saw a video of the spire collapsing. Sobering to think of what will be lost in that fire. I hope everyone made it out safely.
 
Imabot said:
Well...Shit. It hurts to see that famous landmark turning into cinders. I can't even imagine how many priceless items, and other things that were kept and maintained for centuries went up in smoke.
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Last I heard 16 copper statues from the spire were saved because they had been taken down to be cleaned up recently and hadn't been put up yet and a lot of the art as well as the sacraments, the treasure of the cathedral (whatever that is) and the crown of thorns have been saved.
Source for the non-statue info is a journalist attributing the info to a priest who's worked at ND for two years.
 
DeathShade said:
Huh. Did something get reported wrong, because 2 and a half hours ago it was reported two firefighters were dead.
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Wouldn't surprise me if people jumped the gun and assumed there were deaths since to quote ElMariachi on SV

To give you an idea of the work the sapeurs-pompiers did today : most of the firefighting work that saved the cathedral was done from the inside, and the wooden structure in flames was made of wood but also lead, these guys fought inside a building that could collapse on them while ashes, burning wood and molten lead was raining on them, and they still managed to save most of the building, without suffering a single casualty!
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