The USS William D. Porter: The Unluckiest Ship in WWII | Hacker News Reader

The USS William D. Porter: The Unluckiest Ship in WWII

usna63.org

161 pointshubraumhugo41 comments

This ship's story isn't unusual. Every ship during WWII was a safety nightmare. Fratricide was common. So too were dangerous navigation errors. Every weapon system was one checklist item away from a deadly mistake (ie torpedo primers being the only safety mechanism during a drill). We wax nostalgic for all the heroes of WWII, but by today's standards a WWII crew was a bunch of under-trained kids manning extremely dangerous equipment. Such are the needs of war.

"but by today's standards a WWII crew was a bunch of under-trained kids manning extremely dangerous equipment. "

In nazi germany in the end, it was literal kids.

Calvin Graham was a US navy servicemember in world war two who was awarded the bronze star and purple heart at age 12.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_Graham

I once knew a Japanese dude, older guy, now dead. As a kid (like 12-13) he was conscripted by the Japanese military and made to flight test aircraft.

Reminds me of this film. "Die Brücke" (the bridge)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Br%C3%BCcke_(film)

Not exactly the same but heart wrenching (and gut spilling). IIRC we watched this in history class once.

They shot a live torpedo at FDR. Not the usual.

Once upon a time every military asset operated with live rounds. There were no "training" rounds in wartime. What happened in the OP was someone missed a step in an otherwise very normal drill. Want to really scare yourself? Google around for "broken arrows", live nuclear weapons that went missing. Most all of them were live rounds being carried during training. Something went wrong and that live nuke ended up in a field or at the bottom of a lake.

Given it happened in November 1943, it may have been one of the first truely live mk14 torpedoes ;)

Based on some recent inexcusable and fatal mistakes, it's hard to believe that modern US Navy training has become much better.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/01/16/navy-ho...

Awesome. Anyone finding this entertaining, may I recommend Drachinifel’s The Russian 2nd Pacific squadron - voyage of the Damned.

“The Kamchatka announced it was sinking, which lead to much rejoicing amongst the fleet.”

https://youtu.be/9Mdi_Fh9_Ag

Drachinifel's content is amazing. In particular, I love his video on the sinking of HMS Hood [0], his videos on Jutland [1], and his way of working some humor into what he does as with the Kamchatka and the title on his video about surviving the sinking of a ship [2]. Have learned a ton from his channel and had a great time doing it!

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLPeC7LRqIY [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkR2HpkrJ2c [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbX8rJMI9GM

Yeah, that one's much better! Also more historically accurate it seems, as many of the claims in the article seem to be of a rather dubious origin and may be little more than yarn.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IceFeFsS_GY

And even more skepticism regarding the original article: https://uncommonsenseok.blogspot.com/2020/02/uss-william-d-p...

This should be on the front page, not the other one.

Also more humorous take on this clusterfuck of voyage by Bluejay. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzGqp3R4Mx4

I enjoyed Spike Milligan’s biography of his time in the army. To put it mildly, it’s rather funny.

Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall

From Roosevelt’s personal log: “Had that torpedo hit the Iowa in the right spot with her passenger list of distinguished statesmen, military, naval, and aerial strategists and planners, it could have had untold effect on the outcome of the war and the destiny of the country.”

>it could have had untold effect on the outcome of the war

Unlikely. The Soviets defeated the Nazis and nobody outside the Anglosphere questions this fact. FDR was a decent president at home, but the collaborationism of the British and U.S. leadership (see Churchill’s prioritizing of international trade relations via gold standard) meant their offense was very late to the table and more focused on claiming victory than fighting for it.

>and the destiny of the country

Possibly for the better. The AFL-CIO pact was a wreck for working Americans. At the end of the day, FDR was exactly what he claimed to be: “capitalism’s best friend.”

>The Soviets defeated the Nazis and nobody outside the Anglosphere questions this fact

Stalin and the Soviet's top general admit they would have lost badly without lend lease. Stalin was publicly begging for the US to open up a second front. You unironically fell for post WWII Soviet propaganda that they did everything themselves, plenty of communist sympathizers were happy to help spread that message as well

Stalin- "The most important things in this war are the machines.... The United States is a country of machines. Without the machines we received through Lend-Lease, we would have lost the war"

Zhukov - "People say that the allies didn't help us. But it cannot be denied that the Americans sent us materiel without which we could not have formed our reserves or continued the war. The Americans provided vital explosives and gunpowder. And how much steel! Could we really have set up the production of our tanks without American steel? And now they are saying that we had plenty of everything on our own."

Without the lend-lease the Soviets starve and run out of ammo around 1942 and get routed. GDP numbers don't tell the whole story, the Soviets were able to give the US a wish list of high value items so they could focus on manufacturing things they were best at. Almost all their planes used US provided fuel

The Soviets didn’t defeat the Japanese though, and they benefitted substantially from American supplies. As did the British, which kept the Nazis occupied in North Africa, in the air, and elsewhere.

Anglosphere people underrate the Soviet contribution but it’s not clear the Soviets could have done it alone.

Though in fairness, by November 1943 when the torpedo attack happened perhaps they could have.

The Soviets actually had an entente(?) with the japanese right up until the end of the war. Presumably, if the US hadn't asked them to break the entente, they could have just continued that indefinitely (although it's pretty likely some war would have occurred at some point). The Germany-Japan alliance was very thin (for instance, the Germans did not notify the japanese they were planning on invading russia). I think it's arguable that the eastern and western theaters of the war are essentially two separate wars that just happened at roughly (if you squint) the same time.

For what it's worth, the japanese were absolutely terrified of the USSR, for good reason - and when the russians invaded manchuria they basically threw in the towel.

That’s true, but the Japanese had transferred their best units and equipment out of Manchuria to fight in the Pacific, and the Soviets did not want a two front war.

If there had been no chance of American entry Japan probably would have attacked the eastern ussr and the soviets would have faced real difficulties.

But indeed the massively successful Soviet invasion of Manchuria was decisive in Japan’s swift unconditional surrender.

My guess is that Japan would not have done particularly well had they fought the USSR instead of the USA. The USA still blocking japanese oil imports would mean they would have horrible logistical problems. Presumably, the USA would still be supporting the Soviets through the lend-lease program, so although the USSR would be fighting on two fronts, it's totally plausible they would be winning on both fronts. At least, Stalin seemed to think so - after the battle of Stalingrad, he started making public condemnations of IJ, etc.

Even if the Japanese did do really well and pushed the soviets back, they'd just end up in the same situation they were in the 20's, where they controlled large swathes of eastern russia which were basically totally worthless, while also being extremely volatile.

If the Japanese had attacked the USSR at the same time as Germany did, and the USA had not intervened, I guess maybe the USSR would have lost? It's really hard to say: I always have the sense that the Nazis were far more fragile than they look on maps, and engulfing a huge amount of extremely rebellious territory might have just ended up like China ended up for the Japanese.

Late to the table? Yes, the Soviets started fighting in 1939, but it wasn't against the Nazis.

Lmao! If he was a friend of capitalism, he could have let his actions speak for themselves. To the contrary, FDR's economic policies bordered on outright, open corporatism. He obstructed and stymied the free market at every opportunity. Some of his policies were so overreaching that SCOTUS nullified them as unconstitutional. With "friends" like that, who needs enemies?

Does anybody know why reader mode on Safari shows only two divs towards the end of the article? For all the cool features the iPhone brings, I wish they focused more on getting this right.

This is the xpath for the last paragraph. I don't know Safari's reader mode fails here, but find it more remarkable that its normal mode works: /html/body/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/div/font[1]

I, too, happened to notice that the later divs are all nested within the previous ones. Seems to me like there's a bug in page generation; but admittedly, there's a no visible ill effects, so may have escaped capture.

Is it nice to read stuff from first-hand sources like a website designed when the thing happened :look: :D

The same story with a comedy take from The Dollop podcast - https://allthingscomedy.com/podcasts/23---the-willie-dee

It was also on The Memory Palace a few years ago.

https://thememorypalace.us/safe-passage/

It's lacking in comedy, but another unlucky WWII vessel was the USS Sturtevant. It succumbed to an unfortunate sort of friendly fire.

> USS Sturtevant (DD-240) was escorting a convoy off Key West, Florida on 26 April 1942, when the ship unknowingly sailed into an American minefield. The ship struck several mines within minutes and broke into three sections.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_US_Navy_ships_sunk_or_...

This story was also entertainingly told on Episode 73 of the wonderful Half Arsed History podcast, https://halfarsedhistory.net/2019/11/17/episode-73-uss-willi...

And Sam O'Nella https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz0PYzzfixY

the wikipedia article on this boat is throws a fair amount of cold water on the narrative presented here

Further corroborative article to Wikipedia that gives a truer picture of history surrounding USS William D. Porter. Unlike the anecdata in this post, this counters with actual ship logs, recorded conversations, and ship schematics:

https://uncommonsenseok.blogspot.com/2020/02/uss-william-d-p...

OP's article is a spiced up, gossip laden naval lore - the types you expect from navymen banter in pubs & watering holes.

It may be more accurate in this particular case, but please don’t assume Wikipedia is always correct.

I think we can now safely say that Wikipedia is highly likely to be more accurate than almost any other internet source. We shouldn’t feel uncomfortable citing it, nor should it be necessary to include a disclaimer every time we do.

* for articles on popular and well-documented topics

On the other hand, once you get off into the weeds (dead-tree citations, thinly visited articles), Wikipedia's reliability alters significantly.

Unfortunately, it's not always clear which sort of article you're reading.

“More accurate than the internet.”

I want that on a tee shirt.

"I accidentally shot at the President, how unlucky of me."

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