Something from the Pacific Fleet in WW 2

witchbottles

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"C" Turret ( #3 Aft Turret - Main Battery) - coming up and off the USS Arizona on 2/25/1942.

crew is unthreading the cannon barrel so it can be lifted separately.


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Cannon barrel from the USS Arizona - this one was removed for relining in September 1941. Was installed along with the salvaged and relined barrels seen in the first picture on the USS Nevada and returned to service in the war.


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The Flying Bridge National ensign from 12-7-1941. Original flag raised just before the first wave arrived.

They may have put her down, but the guns of the Arizona thundered in riposte several times before the Surrender on the USS Missouri in 1945.
 

witchbottles

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Meet LCS 102, restored and docked at Mare Island Naval museum Pier #3. Tours available to the public - come see how a WW2 amphib crew supported landings in the PTO - 130 ships of the class built - served during the Leyte, Luzon, Okinawa, Iwo Jima, Balikpapan and Tarakan landings - provided the last minute naval gunfire support for the leading waves from Sept 1944 on - these are the ships that laid the now famous smoke screens that can be seen in the NARA photographs of the lead waves going into Iwo Jima.

This is the only restored LCS remaining in the world. Only 1 other ship of this class still exists - it is heavily converted and is now a commercial fishing ship.

LCS 102 pulled inshore bombardment duty during the Iwo Jima landings, and later, served 22 days on the radar picket line around Okinawa during the Kamikaze campaign.
 

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Port Forward view of the Conning Tower of SSBN-658. to the far left is the Engineering Watch Officer Station, just to the right of that is the Diving Control Officer Station and the "Christmas Tree" board with its vent and systems and hatches lights. On the right of this photo is the Port Plane Operator's seat and the Steering Watch Officer's Chair- you can just make out the "dive Bubble" gauges at the top right of the photograph.

The entire Conning tower of this Boomer is intact, and on display, open to the public. It includes working search and targeting telescopes and all systems within the original conning tower restored to service condition while under sail as a Trident I (C-4) SSBN Class Ballistic Missile Submarine.

SSBN- 658 served with SubRon 15, out of Pearl Harbor, as part of the US Pacific Fleet's Strategic Nuclear Triad.
 

witchbottles

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Meet PTF- 26 the only surviving "Liberty"- class PT boat built by Osprey. These boats served in Vietnam as part of fifth Fleet's "Brown Water Navy" - the successors to the WW2 era PT boats.

She is currently restored to full wartime operational condition (with the exception of the de-milled weaponry now onboard on the mounts) - and cruises the SF Bay regularly- home ported about 13 miles from my house in Rio Vista, CA at the USCG River Patrol Station.

She has sailed many times in support of USCG activities, including with a USCG crew onboard along with US Davis Maritime Biologists when "Delta" and "Dawn" a mother and calf humpback whale, entered the Sacramento River Shipping Channel and needed to be guided back to the open ocean, in 2008.

On Veteran's Days, Fleet Week, and 4th of July celebrations, she is the flagship for the SF Bay Area Maritime Association's "fireworks Fleet" - that launches displays from the YPP - and YPW class motor maintenance barges, that are also locally docked in Vallejo Harbor and at Antioch Boat Club alongside Frank's Tract and the Antioch Bridge.
 

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http://alamedanavalairmuseum.org/history/veterans-history-project/


This is what I like to do for volunteer work.
I record some of these video stories and memoirs - we lose more and more of the WW2 generation every day, so every day, really counts now, once they are gone, these video interviews and memoirs, along with their letters and journals and diaries, will be all that is left.

I also volunteer at the Mare Island Naval Museum, the Naval Aviation Museum at Alameda, and the USS Hornet Museum at Alameda, along with the 35th TAW / 31st TRW Command Museum at Travis AFB, CA.
Believe it or not, one of my favorite planes at Travis' museum is the F-4D on a hardstand just inside the Hospital Gate. ( Being an old "flying brick" jet mech for my first hitch in the USMC, it's really not surprising). I like the days we get to go out to her once a month and do corrosion control and long-term preservation on that airframe. (It has one red star from a MiG-19 kill during Operation BOLO).

(Two TFW's of USAF Phantoms operated out of Travis AFB from 1966-1983, as part of the strategic air command's "watchdog" missions- where they flew top cover to refueling B-52 Stratofortresses on their way to the Aleutians when alerts were called, back then. )
 

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Staff Car that delivered Col Doolittle to the Loading Dock for the USS Hornet as the B-25 Mitchells were being craned aboard at NAS Alameda before sailing out for the now-famous raid.
 

Yuri0352

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Very interesting!
Thanks for passing on the info regarding the wartime service of Arizona's guns...I was not aware of that bit of history.
I'm very glad to see that someone had the foresight to preserve Gen. Doolittle's car.
 

witchbottles

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I love this pic- next to last time any Iowa -Class BB went under the Golden Gate Bridge- this is USS Iowa in 2012.

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and this was her last trip out. The Golden Gate will never see another Battlewagon go underneath the piers. She was on her way out to become a museum ship after being de-militarized in San Diego.

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This is the best shot of iron buckets going through the Gate - That is the Uss Arizona, the USS Nevada and the USS Texas, in trail formation - going out to sea. Three battlewagons, three different classes of BBs and the last time SF Bay saw so much armor plate ever in the shipping channels

:D
 

witchbottles

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Very interesting!
Thanks for passing on the info regarding the wartime service of Arizona's guns...I was not aware of that bit of history.
I'm very glad to see that someone had the foresight to preserve Gen. Doolittle's car.
The mockup of the Original Hornet's flight deck that Doolittle first used in briefing the aircrews on how the B-25s would be positioned for takeoff is inside the Navy Air Museum, along with a 6 minute B&W reel footage film you can watch at the push of a button- a video cameo of one of the flight crews making its practice take-off run. Made by the War Department, for FDR to view when he was briefed on the progress of the pre-mission training.

a waist gun MG (de-milled) removed from one of those B-25's the morning of the strike, since they launched from so far away, all waist guns and all the ammo from the tail guns along with most of the flight crew gear, was removed to lighten the planes. - is also on display in the museum.

On the Hangar deck of the Hornet (as she is the Essex-class replacement for the one lost at Santa Cruz), is a B-25 which is at about 70% restoration (still requires a fair number of interior components and one of the engines is a non-working mockup), painted to resemble one of the planes.
One of my favorite displays is the original radio message flimsy from FDR to the aircrew that was read as they reached the 12 mile limit out from SF Bay on their way to bomb Japan. It is document preserved and encased, and hanging in a section of the Navy Air Museum as well. Interesting to read the words of encouragement that a President had for those men who volunteered to take a tiger by the tail.

I think "Yuri" might well enjoy what sits on the pole outside the museum main entrance (it is in the old Flight Ops building for NAS Alameda), - a "Fate" (F-8 Crusader), armed for bear and tilt wing extended as she would have appeared coming off a cat shot.


:D
 

Yuri0352

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The mockup of the Original Hornet's flight deck that Doolittle first used in briefing the aircrews on how the B-25s would be positioned for takeoff is inside the Navy Air Museum, along with a 6 minute B&W reel footage film you can watch at the push of a button- a video cameo of one of the flight crews making its practice take-off run. Made by the War Department, for FDR to view when he was briefed on the progress of the pre-mission training.

a waist gun MG (de-milled) removed from one of those B-25's the morning of the strike, since they launched from so far away, all waist guns and all the ammo from the tail guns along with most of the flight crew gear, was removed to lighten the planes. - is also on display in the museum.

On the Hangar deck of the Hornet (as she is the Essex-class replacement for the one lost at Santa Cruz), is a B-25 which is at about 70% restoration (still requires a fair number of interior components and one of the engines is a non-working mockup), painted to resemble one of the planes.
One of my favorite displays is the original radio message flimsy from FDR to the aircrew that was read as they reached the 12 mile limit out from SF Bay on their way to bomb Japan. It is document preserved and encased, and hanging in a section of the Navy Air Museum as well. Interesting to read the words of encouragement that a President had for those men who volunteered to take a tiger by the tail.

I think "Yuri" might well enjoy what sits on the pole outside the museum main entrance (it is in the old Flight Ops building for NAS Alameda), - a "Fate" (F-8 Crusader), armed for bear and tilt wing extended as she would have appeared coming off a cat shot.


:D
Sounds like a fascinating museum... I will definitely make a visit the next time I'm in the Bay area. Thanks for the heads up!
 

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9182

Eugene B. Sledge, Boot Camp Platoon Photograph - circa 1943

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Kilo Co, 3Bn, 5th Marines - Sledge is center Front Row wearing his dungaree cap tilted back.

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1st, Pltn, Kilo Coy, 3/5 - Peleliu after the 5th Marines were pulled off the Umurbrogol Line - circa 1944.

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Honorable Discharge Certificate for Corporal E.B. Sledge, USMC, circa 1946.

These and many other wartime photos, donated by Cpl. Sledge and the Sledge Family, are in the USMC World War II Museum Collection at Auburn, University. Auburn, AL.
 

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BB-35 USS Texas, the last Dreadnought class BB afloat.

Tuesday morning at Mare Island Navy Yard museum - we received an original print of the Front Page from the San Francisco Chronicle with a beautiful photograph showing her launching from the quay into SF Bay. the USS Texas was the only BB built at Mare Island, but not the only famous capital ship - the CA class USS Indianapolis was also built there. We are quite excited to have the newsprint- we began immediate preservation work on it and it will be going on display as soon as its encasement is completed.
 

R Hooks

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Always love to see BB Texas, wish she was in better shape. Afraid its just a pillbox today, not even a very good one.
 
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