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Comment by smitty1e | Hacker News Reader

> The 115m-long US Navy destroyer sank during the Battle off Samar in 1944 after a fierce battle with a large fleet of Japanese warships.

I tear up to think of this, as a retired sailor. "The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors"[1] is really about standing and delivering. Historians may not agree, but the Battle Off Samar[3] was a modern analog of Thermopylae[3].

One especially poignant moment was when the 5"/38 (of one of the ships, I don't remember if it was precisely this one) gun crew had lost ship's power and continued to train, elevate and fire manually. Until the breech was so hot that the next round cooked off and relieved them all of duty. It isn't often that the foe renders honors while they steam through your wreckage.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Last-Stand-Tin-Sailors-Extraordinary/...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_off_Samar

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Thermopylae

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One of the things that many people don’t know or understand about that battle is just how overmatched the US DD’s were. However, they fought so hard and fired so accurately that the Japanese honestly thought they were fighting more and bigger ships. The price they paid was brutal, but the lives they saved and the effect they had on the overall war is much larger than commonly known.

Massive respect from this AD CPO. I only hope our current Navy could fight as hard and effectively.

>Japanese honestly thought they were fighting more and bigger ships

It's always amazing how difficult identification was in WWII.

A lot of work seems to have gone into jiving action reports from Japanese and American records and the contrasts are pretty wild. Destroyer's reported as battle ships, detailed info on sinking another ship that the other side had no record of... sometimes ships with every advantage over their opponent in position to score some serious victory... simply losing sight of the targets and being taken out of action when go searching for their targets by going the wrong direction.

Nothing seemed certain.

This youtube series telling the Battle of Midway from Japanese perspective (ie. only using the information available to them)is interesting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd8_vO5zrjo&t=1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXjydKPcX60 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHO6xrSF7Sw

(source: good old friend of mine is a retired marine officer)

In WWII, Italy's naval force was really ineffective at doing anything against the British navy. Besides other obvious reasons, the biggest under appreciated factor was that the Brits had radars, Italians didn't.

These days they seem to run into other ships...[1] so I wouldn’t count on them being prepared, but who knows, maybe the others are even worse prepared.

[1] https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/us-naval-accid...

Seems a little distasteful to come up with that in response to someone is respecting folks who died doing their job.

None intended. The US Navy has cut training and had sailors watch videos instead of having them go through actual training. If you don’t train our sailors, what can we expect?

It’s not disrespect, it’s the Navy doing the wrong thing. Sacrificing proper Navy training for who knows what.

Fewer SEAL teams. (Maybe none?). Focus on driving ships which is your job.

For shoreside duties in the decades-long CENTCOM campaigns.

The Destroyermen series is a delightful bit of pulpy SF/Fantasy which takes this fight as a starting off point.

Destroyer saved by being transported to alternate Earth, evolved evil dinosaur people and evolved good lemur people.

Good fun if you don’t take it to seriously.

Also a rather famous occurrence of a mistakenly decrypted message (nonsense padding was thought to be actual plaintext) sent by Admiral Nimitz to his suboridinate Admiral Halsey.

  WHERE IS TASK FORCE THIRTY FOUR THE WORLD WONDERS

"the world wonders" was supposed to be nonsense padding to make enemy cryptanalysis harder, but was mistakenly thought to be part of the original message and passed on by Halsey's radio operator, causing Halsey to believe that Nimitz was sarcastically criticizing him and led to an angry outburst from Halsey, which in turn potentially led Halsey to delay help.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_world_wonders

From [2]:

Gunner's Mate Paul H. Carr was in charge of the aft 5 in (127 mm) gun mount, which had fired nearly all of its 325 stored rounds in 35 minutes before a breech explosion caused by the gun's barrel overheating. Carr was found dying at his station, begging for help loading the last round he was holding into the breech.[34] He was awarded a Silver Star, and a guided missile frigate was later named for him. The guided missile frigates Samuel B. Roberts (FFG-58) and Copeland (FFG-25) were named for the ship and its captain.

I remember watching the battle of Leyte Gulf on the history channel when it was about actual history. Impressive and tragic for both sides, but damned glad we won in the end.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AdcvDiA3lE

Drachinifel covered it in his usual dry-witted way.

A respectful but laced with British humor recounting of the battle is https://youtu.be/4AdcvDiA3lE

"Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors" is available a zillion places other than amazon.

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