Archive for January, 2009

Thanks

Friday, January 2nd, 2009

From Mon Sep 15 08:41:53 1997
>Date: Mon, 15 Sep 97 17:40 MET DST
>To: consim-l@listserv.uni-c.dk, marhst-l@post.queensu.ca,
> mahan@microwrks.com, wwii-l@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu
>Subject: Thanks
>X-Mailer: T-Online eMail 2.0
>X-Sender: 0611603955-0001@t-online.de (Silvia Lanzendoerfer)
>From: BWV_WIESBADEN@t-online.de (Tim Lanzendoerfer)
>Precendence: bulk
>Sender: mahan-owner@microworks.net
>
>For all your suggestions on books, thanks. I do now have a folder >with 25 books
>which I can buy without having to worry about their quality.
>
>Tim
>
>Tim Lanzendoerfer | The US Navy in
>Amateur Naval Historian | the Pacific War
>Email:BWV_Wiesbaden@t-online.de | 1941 – 1945
>Go to: >>>>>>http://www.microworks.net/pacific/

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River Kwai memorial for USS Houston survivors

Friday, January 2nd, 2009

From Mon Sep 15 12:48:28 1997
>Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 12:46:40 -0700
>From: Mike Potter
>Reply-To: mike.potter@artecon.com
>Organization: Artecon, Inc.
>X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01Gold (WinNT; I)
>To: mahan@microworks.net
>Subject: River Kwai memorial for USS Houston survivors
>Precendence: bulk
>Sender: mahan-owner@microworks.net
>
>Memorial to U.S. POWs unveiled at infamous River Kwai
>_____________________________________________________
>Copyright © 1997 Nando.net
>Copyright © 1997 The Associated Press
>
>KANCHANABURI, Thailand (September 15, 1997 11:39 a.m. EDT) — Their
>suffering at the hands of the Japanese army was immortalized years ago
>in a classic film. Now the American POWs who died while building the
>so-called “Death Railway” during World War II have an official memorial.
>
>U.S. Ambassador William Itoh unveiled a plaque Sunday next to the
>infamous bridge the soldiers built over the River Kwai and dedicated the
>memorial to America’s forgotten prisoners.
>
>No American World War II veterans attended the ceremony, but about two
>dozen Vietnam War vets, many of whom reside in Thailand, honored their
>fallen comrades from an earlier era.
>
>Most of the Americans who died while building the 250-mile railway came
>from a U.S. warship, the USS Houston, which was sunk by the Japanese
>navy off the coast of Indonesia.
>
>The survivors were taken prisoner and sent to Thailand as slave laborers
>to build the railway to Burma. They worked under cruel and inhumane
>conditions, and many died.
>
>Their suffering was portrayed in the 1957 Oscar-winning film, “The
>Bridge on the River Kwai.”
>
>Along with the American POWs, the railway was built by veterans from
>Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the Netherlands. But the
>U.S. troops suffered the highest proportion of fatalities: of the 688
>American servicemen who labored on the railway, 356 died.
>
>A total of 60,000 allied prisoners were forced to work on the railway.
>About 12,000 fell prey to disease, executions, starvation or brutal
>torture inflicted by Japanese guards under orders to get the line built
>quickly to speed supply lines to Burma.
>
>An estimated 100,000 Asian laborers who died building the rail link were
>buried where they fell.
>
>Naked except for loin cloths and emaciated from a starvation diet of a
>single ration of rice a day, the POWs were forced to hack through dense
>malarial jungle for 18 hours a day and dig through solid rock with
>primitive hand tools.
>
> -= END OF MESSAGE =-

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Books – which are good?

Friday, January 2nd, 2009

From Mon Sep 15 14:50:21 1997
>X-Mailer: Microsoft Internet Mail & News for Macintosh – 3.0
>Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 22:49:04 +0000
>Subject: Re: Books – which are good?
>From: Stephen F Dent
>To: BWV_WIESBADEN@t-online.de (Tim Lanzendoerfer), consim-l@listserv.uni-c.dk,
> mahan@microwrks.com, marhst-l@post.queensu.ca,
> wwii-l@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu
>Precendence: bulk
>Sender: mahan-owner@microworks.net
>
>I can recommend both Ugaki¹s Fading Victory and Fahey¹s Pacific War Diary as
>fascinating accounts of the Pacific naval war from a first hand perspective,
>but from two very different standpoints. The one being a humble gunner
>aboard a light cruiser, as concerned about his meals and the inescapable
>heat as anything else; the other one of the highest commanders in a navy at
>first seemingly invincible and then increasingly at a loss as to how to
>reverse the tide of war. It is a while since I¹ve read either, but I can
>recall in particular Fahey¹s vivid and quite horrifying account of a
>Kamikaze attack, and Ugaki¹s description of the air attack that cost Admiral
>Yamamoto his life.
>Ugaki spends a great deal of time ascribing Japan¹s predicaments to a lack
>of Œfighting spirit¹, which has always seemed to me to have been one thing
>that the Imperial Navy had in abundance, and not to poor planning,
>leadership and equipment. He does come across as a surprisingly sympathetic
>character, much given to poetic musings, scathing in his criticisms of other
>commanders and with a clear, if grudging, admiration for his foe.
>Fahey offers a less complicated view, but is no less worthwhile a read,
>being a very clear account of what it must have been like fighting in a
>relentless war in far from hospitable conditions.
>Of the others I can only comment that I have always found Dan Van Der Vat¹s
>books immensely readable, if prone to the odd error.
>———-
>From: BWV_WIESBADEN@t-online.de (Tim Lanzendoerfer)
>To: consim-l@listserv.uni-c.dk, mahan@microwrks.com,
>marhst-l@post.queensu.ca,wwii-l@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu
>Subject: Books – which are good?
>Date: Sun, 14 Sep 97 16:19 MET DST
>
>Ladies and Gentlemen,
>I did a search on books today, and came up with some quite interesting
>titles.
>However, I do not know all of these books. I would like to list some here,
>so as
>to get some additional thoughts on them. Are they worth their price, did you
>
>like them?
>Here we go:
>
>Bergerud, Eric, Touched with Fire: The Land War in the South Pacific
>
>Can someone tell me the title and ISBN of Clay Blair’s The US submarine war
>against Japan?
>
>Brown, David, Warship Losses of World War Two
>
>Fahey, J., Pacific War Diary, 1942 – 1945
>
>Francillon, Rene, Japanese Aircraft of the Pacific War
>
>Ienaga, S., Pacific War, 1931 – 1945
>
>Jentschura, H., Warships of the Imperial japanese Navy, 1869 – 1945
>
>Lawson, R., Carrier Air War: In Original WWII Color
>
>Lundstrom, J., The First Team: Pacific Naval Air Combat from Pearl Harbor
>to…
>
>Lundstrom, J., The First Team and the Guadalcanal Campaign
>
>Potter, E., Sea Power, A Naval History
>
>Prados, J., Combined Fleet Decoded
>
>Rohwer, J., Chronology of the War at Sea 1939 – 1945
>
>Sakai, Saburo, Samurai!
>(WW2-L: This was written together with Martin Caidin.)
>
>Spector, Ronald, Eagle against the Sun
>
>Tillman, Barrett, Corsair: F4u in World War II and Korea
>
> Hellcat: the F6F in World War II
>
> Hellcat Aces of World War II
>
> The Dauntless Dive Bomber of World War II
>
> Vought F4u Corsair: Warbird Tech Series
>
> Wildcat: The F4F in World War II
>
> Wildcat Aces of the Pacific
>
>Ugaki, Matome, Fading Victory, the Diary of Admiral Matome Ugaki, 1941 –
>1945
>
>van der Vat, Dan, The Pacific Campaign
>
>Whitley, M.J, Cruisers of World War II
>
>
>
>Tim Lanzendoerfer | The US Navy in
>Amateur Naval Historian | the Pacific War
>Email:BWV_Wiesbaden@t-online.de | 1941 – 1945
>Go to: >>>>>>http://www.microworks.net/pacific/

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Help.

Friday, January 2nd, 2009

From Mon Sep 15 14:49:58 1997
>X-Mailer: Microsoft Internet Mail & News for Macintosh – 3.0
>Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 22:52:49 +0000
>Subject: Help.
>From: Stephen F Dent
>To: mahan@microwrks.com
>Precendence: bulk
>Sender: mahan-owner@microworks.net
>
>Apologies in advance if I have inadvertently sent this to the wrong address,
>or broken etiquette, but I am new to this whole lark and am not quite sure
>what I am doing yet. Anyway, can anybody tell me if there is a way I can
>temporarily turn mail off with Mahan. I know it seems dreadfully rude, what
>with only just having signed up, but, as I¹ve said, I¹m new here and had no
>idea of the volume of stuff that was going to arrive in my mail box! I¹d
>like to be able to join in on Mahan discussions when I feel like it (I quite
>feel like joining in on the ŒNuclear free seas¹ debate, but I¹m a bit busy
>right now), however I don¹t want to keep having great backlogs of files to
>download all the rest of the time. Marhst have a command so you can turn
>mail on and off without having to actually leave the group; is there
>anything similar with Mahan?
>Apologies too is there is some odd punctuation in here. Apparently my
>terminal settings are not configured properly, or something.

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Help.

Friday, January 2nd, 2009

From Mon Sep 15 20:46:18 1997
>X-Authentication-Warning: ecom4.ecn.bgu.edu: mslrc owned process doing -bs
>Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 22:45:45 -0500 (CDT)
>From: “Louis R. Coatney”
>X-Sender: mslrc@ecom4.ecn.bgu.edu
>To: Stephen F Dent
>cc: mahan@microwrks.com
>Subject: Re: Help.
>Precendence: bulk
>Sender: mahan-owner@microworks.net
>
>
>Welcome to MAHAN, Stephen. You’re the first “nuclear free
> zone” recruit we’ve had, so the topic hasn’t been exactly …
> pyrotechnic. 🙂
>
>Lou Coatney
> www.wiu.edu/users/mslrc/

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heavy gun mounts outside USA

Friday, January 2nd, 2009

From Tue Sep 16 10:11:36 1997
>Date: Tue, 16 Sep 1997 10:10:38 -0700
>From: Mike Potter
>Reply-To: mike.potter@artecon.com
>Organization: Artecon, Inc.
>X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01Gold (WinNT; I)
>To: mahan@microworks.net
>Subject: heavy gun mounts outside USA
>Precendence: bulk
>Sender: mahan-owner@microworks.net
>
>Ian L. Buxton wrote:
> >
> > The discussion about Scharnhorst reminds me that one triple 11inch
> > turret from her sister still exists. The original 28cm
> > triple turret (Caesar) was removed from GNEISENAU
> > and re-erected in 1943 at the entrance to Trondheim fjord in Norway.
> > …
> > BTW is this the only WW2 vintage heavy naval turret still
> > in existence outside the Iowas and preserved American BBs?
>
>A recent article in =Warship Intl= showed a Russian triple 12″ gun
>turret that still exists as a coast defense weapon on the Black Sea. I
>don’t remember that the article stated when this turret was
>manufactured. Did large gun _mount_ technology change significantly
>between the world wars? I know the guns themselves did, wire-wound
>manufacture being obsolete by then, for example.
>
>UK-built Japanese 1904-era battleship =Mikawa= exists, cement-mounted,
>in Yokosuka but her 12″ turrets are sealed, or 20 years ago they were.
>
>HMS =Belfast= still exists in London as a successful museum, with 6″
>turrets and 4″ and 40mm gun mounts open to the public. Posters advertise
>her as “Heavy Metal in the 1940s.”
>
>Denmark still has two of =Gneisenau=’s twin 15cm turrets in military
>operation for coast defense.
>
>Ian Buxton and I are using “turret” in its 20th C sense. I know that in
>the 19th C turrets were distinct from barbette mountings.

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Destroyers again

Friday, January 2nd, 2009

From Tue Sep 16 09:28:27 1997
>Date: Tue, 16 Sep 97 18:27 MET DST
>To: mahan@microwrks.com, >marhst-l@post.queensu.ca, wwii-l@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu
>Subject: Destroyers again
>X-Mailer: T-Online eMail 2.0
>X-Sender: 0611603955-0001@t-online.de (Silvia Lanzendoerfer)
>From: BWV_WIESBADEN@t-online.de (Tim Lanzendoerfer)
>Precendence: bulk
>Sender: mahan-owner@microworks.net
>
>Destroyers is indeed giving me headaches…four >books checked and four different
>values for the speed of Fletcher!
>Terzibaschitsch: 32.3 knots
>Whitley: 38 knots
>Gallupini: 36 knots
>Finally Jane’s post-war edition: 36.5 knots
>
>plus, two handbooks for computer games:
>Great Naval Battles 3: 38 knots
>Task Force 1942: 37 knots
>
>It would appear Jane’s and Gallupini have a good info here; anything above
>sounds more like a test-drive speed. Terzibaschitsch is extremely low, but I
>wonder how he got that number?
>
>Tim
>Tim Lanzendörfer | “Lebt der Herr Reichskanzler noch?
>Amateur Naval Historian | Und wenn ja, was gedenkt er dagegen
>Email: BWV_Wiesbaden@t-online.de | zu tun?” – Private letter, 1905
>
> The United States Navy in the Pacific War 1941 – 1945
> http://www.microworks.net/pacific/index.htm
> The ships, the men, the battles

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Heavy gun mounts outside USA

Friday, January 2nd, 2009

From Tue Sep 16 11:37:57 1997
>Date: Tue, 16 Sep 97 14:32:30 EDT
>From: JOHN SZALAY
>X-To: “mahan@microworks.net
>To: mahan@microworks.net
>Subject: RE: Heavy gun mounts outside USA
>Precendence: bulk
>Sender: mahan-owner@microworks.net
>
>
>While NOT navy turrets, Finland has a restored 12in turret once used
>for coast artillery, and now a museum. They have a site on the web for
>futher information.
>
>
> http://www.hkkk.fi/~yrjola/war/coast/kuivasaa.html
>
>
>I stumbled on that site while reseaching coast artillery batteries
>such as the one my father manned on the beach at Waikiki in the 30-40’s
>
>FWIW: and I believe it has been pointed out here before, 2 of the
>12in turrets from the Arizona were salvaged and were to be used as coast
>artillery batteries, however only one was ever completely installed .
>Both were scrapped in the late 40’s with the disbanding of the coast
>artillery systems of the US.
>
> John Szalay
> jpszalay@tacl.dnet.ge.com

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Another River Kwai kwiz

Friday, January 2nd, 2009

From Fri Sep 19 16:42:35 1997
>Date: Fri, 19 Sep 1997 16:41:49 -0700
>From: Mike Potter
>Organization: Artecon, Inc.
>X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01Gold (WinNT; I)
>To: mahan@microworks.net
>Subject: Another River Kwai kwiz
>Precendence: bulk
>Sender: mahan-owner@microworks.net
>Reply-To: mahan@microworks.net
>
>Another River Kwai kwiz:
>
>=Jane’s Fighting Ships 1942=, published in May 1943, lists USS =Houston=
>as “Missing since Feb. 28, 1942.” The 1944 edition, published before
>=Houston=’s survivors were liberated at war’s end, accurately described
>her demise as sunk in action against Japanese heavy surface forces and
>IIRC it gave the date and location.
>
>How did the US Navy (and Jane’s) discover =Houston=’s fate while war was
>still in progress against Japan?
>
>–

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NAVAL HISTORY Sept./Oct. 97

Friday, January 2nd, 2009

From Wed Sep 17 11:25:40 1997
>Date: Wed, 17 Sep 1997 14:25:19 -0400 (EDT)
>From: USNIWest@aol.com
>To: MARHST-L@post.queensu.ca, MILHST-L@ukanvm.bitnet, mahan@microwrks.com
>Subject: Re: NAVAL HISTORY Sept./Oct. 97
>Precendence: bulk
>Sender: mahan-owner@microworks.net
>
>Crossposted to MARHST-L, MILHST-L, and Mahan-L
>
>Here is the table of contents for the latest issue of NAVAL HISTORY magazine,
>published by the U.S. Naval Institute. Sorry so late posting….
>
>As usual if anyone has inquiries about this issue or subscribing to NAVAL
>HISTORY they can contact me at USNIWest@aol.com. By the way, I’ve completed
>the 1996 and 1997 indexes to the magazine.
>
> TITANIC with Tacos and Hot Salsa by Kit H. Bonner
> A naval historican who served as a technical advisor for megathriller
>director James Cameron’s __Titanic__ takes a light-hearted look at the
>challenges of shooting a movie–set in the North Atlantic–in Mexico.
>
>While MacArthur Slept by VAdm. W.D. Houser, U.S. Navy (Ret.)
> When naval forces were heavily engaged in the Battle of Suriago Strait,
>the General was safely out of harm’s way in the light cruiser NASHVILLE.
>
>Salvage Man by CDR John D. Alden, USN(Ret.)
> Edward Ellsberg and the Navy command bureaucracy did not suffer each
>other well, but when a ship needed raising, he was the man to do the job.
>
>When the British Just Couldn’t Win by CDR A. Powell Harrison, USCGR(Ret.)
> During the War of 1812, hardy Delmarva tobacco farmers and oystermen
>”bruised the shanks” of Royal squadrons for two years.
>
>Schooner G.I. textwork and artwork by Helm Pohlmann
> He had wanted to be a sailor since he had been a Sea Scout as a boy.
> But the Army drafted him into World War II. Then an opportunity arose to be
>a seaman–of sorts–in the radio schooner and relay station GEOANNA.
>
>USS SEQUOIA by Eric Tegler
> The life of one presidential yacht has endured peaks and valleys–so
>for.
>
>What’s That Statue in Farragut Square? by Capt. Kent Siegel, USN(Ret.)
> Appalled by a newspaper poll, the Naval Order of the United States and
>the National Park Service are resurrecting a war hero in Washington.
>
>The U.S. Navy Comes Ashore in the Med by Dean Allard
> The former Director of the Naval Historical Center looks at the neglected
>role of the
>U.S. Navy in the Mediterranean during World War II
>
>And of course the following regular departments:
>Looking Back
>In Contact: (Comments from readers)
>Book Reviews
>Historic Fleets/ Historic Aircraft
>Naval History News
>Salty Talk
>Reunions
>Museum Report
>
>******************************************************************************
>****************
>Mary Beth Straight Kiss
>U.S. Naval Institute Representative
>3485 Old Cobble Ct.
>San Diego, CA 92111-4045
>USNIWest@aol.com or (619) 874-8286
>
>**When Ordering USNI books, photographs, certificates, or memberships, please
>provide the code MK7 on the order form or to the customer service
>Representative.
>******************************************************************************
>****************

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The Mahan Naval Discussion List hosted here at NavalStrategy.org is to foster discussion and debate on the relevance of Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan's ideas on the importance of sea power influenced navies around the world.
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