Best ship ever.

I feel this may have made for a better movie than "Men Who Stare at Goats".

FTA:"Do you ever get sick of hearing about "the greatest generation"? For over 60 years now, it's been all "they survived the Depression" this and "they defeated the Nazis" that and "they never looked stupid in hats."

Wow, that Xavier Jackson sure likes to project, so the whole "greatest generation" deserved being belittled due to the actions on this one ship? Interesting story, they should have got someone else to write it.

This needs to be a movie. Now.

FailBoat: Hijinx on the High Seas.

brigid_fitch: Wait, Operation Petticoat was a non-fiction piece??

Hey now, the USS SeaTiger served admirably, despite the series of misadventures that resulted in it being painted pink and having women aboard!

/We sunk a truck!

The USS Drew Curtis? Crewed by farkers

That was as inspiring as L. Ron Hubbard's naval career.

/off to shoot Mexico

Cracked articles are fun, but you think the author will ever cop to finding this old article and barely rewriting it to avoid plagiarism?

Link (new window)

This thread needs more Ha Ha Guy. Either one would do.

Thread is pointless, no amount of snark can top the truth here.

Heh, very enjoyable read on a classic story.

"Shot a torpedo at the president" is not something you'd want to see on your yearly evaluation

Japanese planes didn't show up on radar because they were made of wood and canvas. yeah right.

where the did this guy learn history and physics from?
a cracked article or something?

quoinguy: Cracked articles are fun, but you think the author will ever cop to finding this old article and barely rewriting it to avoid plagiarism?

Link (new window)

You mean the one he linked in the article (the link just above #3)?

So I guess that counts as coping to it. Admitting to plagarism? I doubt it.

tortilla burger: "Shot a torpedo at the president" is not something you'd want to see on your yearly evaluation

I read King's biography and after the torpedo missed Iowa the Fleet Admiral sent an order out to the rest of the task force "From henceforth, Iowa will no longer be used as a target for torpedo drill".

FDR was incredibly forgiving of the whole thing. King, naturally, was not.

/The village people never did a song about the army

tinyarena: Impressive. But still not the All Time Winner.
That award goes to the Vasa.
It didn't even make it out of the habor.

That seems to be the paradox, yeah. The dumbest of the dumb are never heard about, just because they don't last long enough to become legendary. I'd say these guys are worse. The Vasa only got to screw up once, but it was a running gag for these idiots.

When I read this story, I absolutely could not believe it.

The anchor part killed me the bestest

Torqueknot: quoinguy: Cracked articles are fun, but you think the author will ever cop to finding this old article and barely rewriting it to avoid plagiarism?

Link (new window)

You mean the one he linked in the article (the link just above #3)?

So I guess that counts as coping to it. Admitting to plagarism? I doubt it.


Yeah, that one. I know he linked to it, but gee whiz, he followed that to a tee when writing his version. I'm thinking he'd get an F if it were a college project for English class.

Fluorescent Testicle: This needs to be a movie. Now.

FailBoat: Hijinx on the High Seas.

They did.

Rule #1 of War:

DO NOT SHOOT AT YOUR OWN PRESIDENT

Um.

Not funny?

;)

From one of the articles linked:

After 1943 the ship was commonly hailed by other ships with the greeting: 'Don't shoot! We're Republicans!' Willie Dee became a black sheep, and sailors like Bill Glover, a 17-year-old from Montgomery, Ala., when he joined the destroyer in 1944, were not happy about being assigned to it. 'In less than a year after launching, it had done several things we heard about, so I didn't want to go to the Porter,' he said. 'They acknowledged it when I got on board, laughed about it some. Nobody had gotten hurt, so you could joke about it some. And plus, there was a war on so we had other things to do.' Besides, Glover said, Willie Dee didn't screw up any more than the typical Navy ship run with inexperienced crews who had never been to sea. Willie Dee drew attention with a particularly dramatic error involving the president, but similar mistakes happened all the time as young crews learned on the job, he remembered.

'Once you've fired a torpedo at Roosevelt, then everyone is looking at you and you get noticed for all the little things that everyone else is doing too,' Glover said. 'There were a lot of rookies in the service in 1943. Mistakes were made because 17-year-olds don't know how not to make mistakes.' Glover pointed out a fact largely forgotten in the victory of World War II: In the scramble to gear up in the early days of the war, the nation was sending brand new ships to sea with crews so young and inexperienced that they were quite literally learning everything as they went.


Other than accidently firing on the Iowa, these guys apparently weren't any worse than the rest of the fleet at the time.

Sorry, I should have did this sooner...

relcec: Japanese planes didn't show up on radar because they were made of wood and canvas. yeah right.

where the did this guy learn history and physics from?
a cracked article or something?

No kidding. The Aichi D3A "Val" was a metal construction aircraft. It used little wood and canvas.

But wood and canvas do not show up well as metal dose on Radar. A Horten Ho-229 mockup was tested for National Geographic. The Radar return was qutie low.

Link (new window)

McHale's Navy was a documentary,
and events occurred in real time.

The cop from the Village people tried to take my bag of pretzels behind a bar once. I had just purchased these pretzels from a local 7-11 and had traveled for minutes on bicycle to get them, so I wasn't giving them up easily. So there I was... head to head with cop dude... and I said, "No, I need these pretzels"

Apparently, according to the Wikipedia article, the Porter wasn't the only vessel in the torpedo drill either. I'm not sure, but I think everyone targeted the Iowa, but the Porter just happened to have a live primer on her number three torpedo tube.

By the reports, the guy responsible for that eventually came clean and said that after the torpedo fired, he panicked and threw the used primer overboard.

Personally, I think it was a pretty dumb idea to use the vessel the president was on as a practice target. I don't know if it was the Porter's captain's specific call though. I live in DC. I've seen how people can get thrown under buses to preserve the greater good (or evil, it's all pretty ambiguous here).

So targeting the President's ship was a bad idea, and when something went wrong, someone had to pay. Just perhaps not the person who failed to see a problem with allowing the Iowa to be used as a practice target while the CINC was on board.

The Art of War Fail (live to fight fail again).

My ship sure as hell felt like it had the cast of Police Academy on it, and not in a good way. Seriously though, fark that cruiser.

MAHONEYYYYYY!!!!!