For old naval nerds (and nerds of old navies)

[gringop]

The Ayes of Texas if I remember right... kind of a trashy book in my recollection but teenaged me liked it anyways...

Who are you calling trashy? Where else can you find such wondrous insightful prose?

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The mass of quiet Texans, hitherto uninvolved, exploded in rage. If the Soviet Union believed Texans behaved like Russians, who, once given a taste of the knout, are as docile as sheep unto the tenth generation, they were much mistaken. By the thousands, grim-faced men and women, carrying anything that would fire, converged on the city during the night and found places in rooms and offices overlooking Navigation Boulevard.

By daybreak, whole buildings were crammed to the eaves with hunters determined to bag the limit during the open season on Russian bear.
*******************************

And,

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The Russian ship, its launchers reloaded, its missiles aimed by radar, sent its second salvo winging toward the Texas before Gwillam Forte, only slowly coming around, was aware of what was happening. He lifted his head and eyes only in time to see the five silvery fingers of fate coming directly at him.

This time, instinct didn’t preserve him. One missile detonated before it reached its target, but the other four struck in deadly unison, two on the superstructure, the other two at the water line.

Within seconds, the Texas followed Gwillam Forte into the watery corridors of death. Battered beyond recognition, with columns of smoke rising high into the sky from a dozen raging fires, its watertight integrity breached, plates sprung and superstructure flattened and twisted or blown clear away, the old ship settled in the black channel waters and sank out of sight.

The victorious Karl Marx, now but a kilometer away, ceased fire and slowed to avoid ramming the sinking remains of its adversary.

The Texas seemed quite dead-dead and buried, in fact, but in the watery darkness the ship’s heart still beat....
*********************************

Will the Rooskie's take over Houston??? Will it for real become Moscow on Buffalo Bayou???

Read it and find out.

https://books.feedvu.com/fullbook/th...uz.html?page=1


Gringop

[Glenn E. Meyer]

When I was a lad, I bought a current copy of Jane's Fighting Ships for $35.00. Got an ad for this years - $1800. Think I will pass on it.

[feudist]

This was epic, and it's only part one.

Part 2

[Glenn E. Meyer]

The USNI - https://www.usni.org/ is having a 50% sale on it's books. So you can get some really nice compendium books on various ship types along with strategy reviews and war histories. Just ordered a set of Norman Friedman books and one on the post war history of battleships by Baker.

[awp_101]

Warship Wednesday, Dec.7, 2022: Pearl Harbor D+365

Just one year to the day after the Japanese attack that wiped out the Pacific Fleet’s Battleforce, sending four battleships (five if you count the old USS Utah) to the bottom and severely damaging four more, the Navy was already busy making new ships to fill the gaps.

Commissioned in that 365-day period between December 7th, 1941 and 1942 were all four of the brand new South Dakota-class battleships, with SoDak (BB-57) entering the fleet on 20 March, Indiana (BB-58) on 30 April, Massachusetts (BB-59) on 12 May– then cleaning the Vichy French battleship Jean Bart‘s clock just six months later– and Alabama (BB-60) on 16 August, very much making good on the battlewagon losses from Pearl Harbor.

This tidbit really caught my eye:

The Iowas were immense ships, with some 175 tons of blueprint paper alone in the class’s 430,000 man-days of design and each vessel’s 3,300,000 man-days of construction time.

Each was crafted with:

4,300,000 feet of welding
90 miles of piping
15,000 valves
300 miles of electric cables (some of them armored)
900 electric motors
312,000 pounds of paint
15 miles of manila and wire rope
1,857 access openings (161 hatches, 844 doors, and 852 manholes)

[awp_101]

Not naval specific, but I've been listening to the podcast version of this for a couple of months now and it's pretty good (IMO):

[awp_101]

USS North Carolina 40mm Bofors mount, Pearl Harbor Navy Yard 15NOV42

Click for large by huge version

[Glenn E. Meyer]

Got the Norman Friedman books on cruisers, one on destroyers, one on carrier and a book by Baker on the fate of battleships. Came the other day. Good to sit in my chair and look out the window at the snow.

[awp_101]

More of the story: Intense HUD Video Lets You Feel The Tension Of A Naval Aviator During His First Cat Shot Off An Aircraft Carrier

[awp_101]

The Homeward Bound Pennant