There are 1539 users online
You can register for a user account here.
Login
Military Photos
Main Menu
Online
Past Articles
Military Quotes
The highest generalship is to compel the enemy to disperse his army, and then to concentrate superior force against each fraction in turn. -- Col. Henderson |
Pearl Harbor Raid, 7 December 1941, Attacks off the West Side of Ford Island(333 total words in this text)(2338 Reads) The thirty-year-old Utah, which had been converted from an obsolete battleship ten years earlier, received two torpedoes, completely overwhelming her very limited ability to absorb underwater damage. She capsized to port in about ten minutes, coming to rest with her bottom in the air. As Utah's crew were abandoning ship and swimming through the oily water to Ford Island, they were the target of machine-gun attacks by Japanese planes. Although ten trapped Sailors were later cut free from her upturned hull, about sixty were lost with their ship. Utah was partially turned upright in 1943-44 but was not further salvaged. Her remains are now the site of a small memorial. USS Raleigh was hit by one torpedo and a bomb. Of an old and not very sturdy design, she barely avoided capsizing, but her crew, assisted by a salvage barge and a tug, kept her upright and afloat. Major repairs returned Raleigh to the active fleet in a a little over a half-year. Also damaged west of Ford Island was the seaplane tender Curtiss, hit by a crashing enemy dive bomber, plus one bomb and fragments of another during the second wave attack. Curtiss was also unsuccessfully attacked by a Japanese midget submarine, which fired a torpedo at the seaplane tender and was then promptly sunk by the destroyer Monaghan. |
Military History
Forum Posts
This Day in History
1865:
Confederate General Joseph Johnston officially surrenders his army to General William T. Sherman at Durham Station, North Carolina.
1865: John Wilkes Booth is killed when Union soldiers track him down to a Virginia farm 12 days after he assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. 1865: Joseph E. Johnston surrenders the Army of Tennessee to Sherman. 1937: The ancient Basque town of Guernica in northern Spain is bombed by German planes. 1952: Armistice negotiations are resumed. 1971: The U.S. command in Saigon announces that the U.S. force level in Vietnam is 281,400 men, the lowest since July 1966. 1972: President Nixon, despite the ongoing communist offensive, announces that another 20,000 U.S. troops will be withdrawn from Vietnam in May and June, reducing authorized troop strength to 49,000. |