Military Memes

[Wildman]

 

[Wildman]

 

[Wildman]

 

[Wildman]

 

[Dr. Internet]

View attachment 703553

Still got mine! 55 years old, and it still works great.

 

[Wildman]

 

[Wildman]

Still got mine! 55 years old, and it still works great.

I carry mine in my Jeep for trail emergencies.

 

[Wildman]

 

[Wildman]

 

[cjmckenna]

View attachment 703553

I lost mine in the divorce years ago. It was a worthwhile trade. I have since replaced it with a couple of new ones. They live in my cars.
Now my woobie. That's a different story. You can pry it from my cold dead hands!

 

[Dan The Video Man]

 

[NDSpeed]

View attachment 703553

My grandmother would take them after the war (world war eleven) and sew quilt material over them. So warm and heavy. But not itchy. Very nice.

 

[Mhass]

 

[Wildman]

 

[Zorba]

View attachment 704546

Where did you find the picture of @John Cooper when he was in?

 

[Wildman]

Where did you find the picture of @John Cooper when he was in?

I've seen some armor that look close to this before...

In recovery school they have a pit that they sink a tank into and it's neck deep mud & water that you have to wade through to hook up the cables to recover it...
And doesn't matter if it's summer or winter everyone does it... Since I was their cadre I was invited a few times to join them..

 

[Wildman]

 

[Wildman]

 

[Wildman]

On July 7, 1908, a 23-year-old U.S. Navy officer made the kind of mistake that could follow a man for the rest of his career.

His name was Chester W. Nimitz.

He was commanding the destroyer USS Decatur in the Philippines when the ship ran aground on a mud bank in Batangas Harbor.

The Navy investigated.

Nimitz was court-martialed for "culpable inefficiency in the performance of duty."

He was found guilty and formally reprimanded.

It was an inauspicious moment for a young officer who would eventually command the largest naval war in American history.

But in 1908, none of that future existed.

There was only a grounded destroyer and a court-martial.

Nimitz remained in the Navy.

The following year, his career moved in a direction few ambitious officers considered glamorous: submarines.

The submarine force of 1909 was still in its infancy.

These were not the enormous nuclear-powered vessels that would come generations later. Early American submarines were small, uncomfortable and mechanically unreliable. Their crews worked inside cramped hulls surrounded by machinery, fuel and batteries.

The battleship was the prestige weapon of the era.

Submarines were experimental.

Nimitz learned them anyway.

He commanded the USS Plunger, USS Snapper, USS Narwhal and USS Skipjack during his early submarine career.

He studied their machinery and propulsion systems in detail and developed expertise in diesel engines at a time when the technology was becoming increasingly important to the Navy.

In 1913, Nimitz traveled to Europe to study diesel-engine manufacturing.

He later helped oversee the installation of diesel engines aboard the fleet oiler USS Maumee.

The young officer who had once been formally reprimanded for running a ship aground was becoming one of the Navy's most technically experienced officers.

His career continued.

World War I.

Staff assignments.

Sea commands.

Naval education.

Senior leadership positions.

By the late 1930s, Nimitz had risen into the Navy's upper ranks.

Then, on the morning of December 7, 1941, Japanese aircraft appeared over Pearl Harbor.

Within hours, much of the American battleship force in the Pacific had been sunk or damaged.

USS Arizona exploded.

USS Oklahoma capsized.

USS West Virginia sank at her berth.

Aircraft burned on airfields across Oahu.

More than 2,400 Americans were killed.

The United States entered World War II the following day.

The Pacific Fleet needed a new commander.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt chose Chester Nimitz.

On December 31, 1941, Nimitz formally assumed command as Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet.

The ceremony took place aboard the submarine USS Grayling at Pearl Harbor.

Thirty-two years after entering the submarine service, Nimitz was now responsible for directing the American naval war against Japan.

He inherited a brutal strategic situation.

Japan was advancing across the Pacific.

Hong Kong had fallen.

The Philippines were under attack.

Wake Island had been captured.

American and Allied forces were being pushed backward across thousands of miles.

The United States could not immediately match Japan's position in the Pacific.

Nimitz had to fight with what remained.

Then American codebreakers began intercepting evidence of another major Japanese operation.

The target was Midway Atoll.

Nimitz trusted the intelligence.

He ordered his available aircraft carriers into position northeast of Midway and prepared an ambush.

On June 4, 1942, Japanese carrier aircraft attacked the island.

American aircraft struck back.

Within hours, three Japanese carriers — Akagi, Kaga and Sōryū — were burning.

The fourth, Hiryū, was hit later that day.

All four were eventually lost.

The United States lost the carrier Yorktown.

Midway did not end the Pacific War.

But Japan had lost four frontline aircraft carriers, hundreds of aircraft and many experienced aviators and crewmen. The strategic initiative in the Pacific increasingly began moving toward the United States.

Nimitz would spend the next three years helping turn that shift into an advance across the ocean.

Tarawa.

Kwajalein.

Saipan.

Guam.

Tinian.

Iwo Jima.

Okinawa.

American forces moved across the Central Pacific, capturing positions that brought ships and aircraft progressively closer to Japan.

Submarines also became one of America's most destructive weapons.

U.S. submarines attacked Japanese merchant shipping across the Pacific, cutting supply routes and contributing to the collapse of Japan's maritime economy.

The branch of naval warfare Nimitz had entered when it was still experimental had become indispensable.

In December 1944, Nimitz received the newly created five-star rank of Fleet Admiral.

By the summer of 1945, American forces had reached Japan's doorstep.

Then came Hiroshima.

Nagasaki.

The Soviet Union entered the war against Japan.

On August 15, Emperor Hirohito announced Japan's acceptance of the Allied surrender terms.

The formal ceremony came eighteen days later.

September 2, 1945.

Tokyo Bay.

Representatives of Japan boarded the battleship USS Missouri.

General Douglas MacArthur signed the Instrument of Surrender on behalf of the Allied powers.

Then Chester Nimitz stepped forward.

He signed on behalf of the United States.

Thirty-seven years had passed since the night the USS Decatur ran aground in the Philippines.

In 1908, Nimitz had been a 23-year-old ensign standing before a naval court to answer for his failure.

In 1945, he stood aboard an American battleship in Tokyo Bay as Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, one of the principal commanders responsible for defeating Japan.

The court-martial had not disappeared from his past.

It simply had not determined his future.

Nimitz stayed in the Navy.

He learned.

He accepted assignments far removed from the prestige of the battleship fleet.

He mastered new technology.

He accumulated decades of experience.

And when the United States suffered one of the worst military disasters in its history, he was eventually given responsibility for rebuilding the fight across the Pacific.

A grounded destroyer in 1908.

Japan's surrender in 1945.

Between those two moments were 37 years of work.

 

[Wildman]