4th of July - Lake Kathleen 2013

My third annual sojourn to the north end of the lake to watch a noisy celebration of the birth of the United States.

USS Indianapolis

I've long been fascinated with tragic ships - I'm not into tragedies in general, but for some reason a ship that had a major tragedy just feels more like a human story than one where the ship and her crew sailed the seas in relative obscurity and peace.

Indianapolis is an interesting ship for many reason; the aesthetics of  her lines, the story of her war-time service and final, top-secret mission, also for her loss. Outfitted with the latest radar and sensors, she was torpedoed and sunk in the closing days of the war. The world's most powerful and advanced Navy didn't notice.

A great many American sailors perished horribly because of bureaucracy and lack of caring. The most advanced weapons in the world will not protect you from the harm of human limitations. 

Under the Wire Random Photo

Below we have a couple of random photos from my last trip to NARA II. The first is Langley and some battleships near Puerto Rico in March of 1926. This is a great view of the between-wars battle fleet - the Big Five plus the dawn of American Naval airpower.



Next is a reminder that even great navies and good ships lose, DE-143 USS Fiske sinking after her back was broken by a torpedo from U-804 on August 2nd, 1944. 33 sailors were lost, and U-804 was herself later lost with all hands.

Random Photos - Dunkeswell Aerodrome, England 1944

A couple of photos I stumbled across during my last trip to NARA II in 80-G; Dunkeswell Aerodrome, October, 1944. This was originally meant as a fighter base, but with the stopping of Germany's aerial assault, it was turned over to the Royal Navy and Royal Navy for use in patrolling for u-boats.

The first shot is of a couple of Royal Navy SeaFires (I presume) in front of a temporary hangar.

A crop-in of the planes:

The second shot is of a supply hangar under construction, with several smaller, camouflaged buildings nearby. This shot is looking east-southeast, towards the Dunkeswell Methodist church (in the upper right), which still exists.

http://www.dsft.co.uk/
http://www.controltowers.co.uk/d/dunkeswell.htm
http://www.southwestairfields.co.uk/?page_id=53

Random Photos - Good duty?

I came across these photos last month in the NARA San Bruno Archives within some folders in the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard records. My first thought was, "oh, someone pulled crap duty!" But, considering the oil soaked waters, toxic environments, and sheer danger of the salvage work at Pearl Harbor, perhaps a little smelting duty was a nice break.

Quick note - I am not dead

I always aim to post at least one blog entry a month... the last couple of months has not been good for this. I've got completed documents in the pipeline and others in progress. I hit NARA San Bruno last month and have some new documents that should be popping online in the next couple of years (yes, my backlog is that large). Every once and a while I look over the stats for my site to see how many people are looking and what they're rolling. Interestingly, when I looked tonight, iOS was higher on the list of operating systems used by my guests than Macintosh was, indicating more people are reading by iPad or iPhone than laptops. Windows is still the monster, at 77% of the viewers, but I think it says something about where things are heading that iOS had just over 8% and Mac was just under. I also took pains from the beginning to make sure my pages worked on older machines with lower resolutions; this is a nod to veterans who aren't pushing the super-high resolutions the kids these days take for granted. I aimed for "works well in 800 x 600" and that has paid off as these tablet devices and phones have smaller resolutions. It's largely meant I haven't had to rework the entire site to handle these new additions to the internet. I got lucky.

Random Photo - Remington Rand Factory, 1944

This is the Remington Rand factory in Bridgeport Connecticut on April 13, 1944. You can see it today here - note the St. Augustine Cemetery just above it in both photos.

The site was sold to the RemGrit Corporation corporation in 1986 and is pretty run-down these days, but at the time this photo was taken, roughly 17,000 employees were working at this site. Record Group 80-G has some odd finds from time to time...