Destroyers: Fletcher Class

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Pelican
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Re: Destroyers: Fletcher Class

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GREYHOUND - FLETCHER CLASS - QUESTION

Tom Hanks WWII Battle of the Atlantic movie “Greyhound” is released on Apple TV today instead of planned cinema release.
Based on the novel "The Good Shepherd" by C.S. Forester.
Can Hollywood 2020 match 1953 “The Cruel Sea” ?

See:
https://tv.apple.com/gb/movie/greyhound ... plmnt=true

Is this comment correct?
"Kim Madge I dont think the yanks operated Fletcher class Destroyers in the Atlantic campaign I wait to be corrected."
HMS Pelican 1938 - 1958 GGCV L86 U86 F86 What I Have I Hold ~ A wonderful bird is the Pelican its beak can hold more than its belly can.
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Pelican
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Re: Destroyers: Fletcher Class

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HMS Pelican 1938 - 1958 GGCV L86 U86 F86 What I Have I Hold ~ A wonderful bird is the Pelican its beak can hold more than its belly can.
Brian James
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Re: Destroyers: Fletcher Class

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Fletcher Class Destroyer USS Nicholas pictured post her FRAM conversion off Mare Island Naval Shipyard on March 2nd 1951.
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Brian James
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Re: Destroyers: Fletcher Class

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Fletcher Class Destroyer USS Wedderburn pictured during a RAS with Essex Class Carrier USS Intrepid off the Philippines on November 18th 1944.
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Brian James
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Re: Destroyers: Fletcher Class

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Fletcher Class Destroyer USS The Sullivans pictured as she conducts a RAS with USS Enterprise...1962
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Pelican
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Re: Destroyers: Fletcher Class

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Remembering the USS Johnston & Cmdr. Ernest Evans at the Battle off Samar
April 3, 2021
In November 2019, RV Petrel located the scattered wreckage of a World War II warship at a depth of 21,180 ft in the Philippine Sea. The wreck, thought to be the deepest wreck of a warship ever discovered, was suspected to be either of the USS Johnston or possibly the USS Hoel. On Thursday, the Navy and a team of undersea explorers announced that the wreck had been positively identified as the USS Johnston.

Late last month, a manned-submersible operated by Caladan Oceanic, a Dallas undersea exploration company, located the front two-thirds of the ship, sitting upright, along with the bridge, midsection, and the identifying hull number, 557.

USS Johnston was a Fletcher Class destroyer under the command of Ernest E. Evans at the Battle off Samar. The Johnston was among four destroyers and three destroyer escorts guarding six escort carriers of the Task Force 77.43, known by its call sign “Taffy Three.” On the morning of October 25, 1944, they were surprised by an overwhelming Japanese fleet of four battleships, eight cruisers, and at least twelve destroyers.

As recounted by the Naval History and Heritage Command:

Without waiting for orders, Evans gave the command to commence a torpedo run against the enemy. Johnston steered toward her target, an enemy cruiser, veering and fishtailing toward enemy shell splashes in the belief that “lightning doesn’t strike twice.” Evans closed to less than 10,000 yards before loosing a spread of torpedoes. Several of them blew the bow off the Japanese cruiser.

For more than three hours, Johnston engaged the enemy. Evans’s aggressiveness, along with that of other American destroyermen and aviators from Taffy Three, led the Japanese to believe they were facing a much larger force and caused them to turn away.

Evans was from Pawnee, Okla. His mother was Cherokee, and his father was half White and half Creek Indian. Despite the racism of the era, he was admitted to the Naval Academy and graduated in 1931. He was 36 at the time of the attack, and he had been the Johnston’s only skipper.

Of the Johnstone‘s crew of 327, only 141 survived. Commanding Officer Cmdr. Ernest Evans was awarded a posthumous Medal of Honor, the first Native American in the U.S. Navy and one of only two destroyer captains in WWII to be so honored.

See:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VhfS_KcR-4
And for links contained within the article above:
http://www.oldsaltblog.com/2021/04/reme ... more-57339
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HMS Pelican 1938 - 1958 GGCV L86 U86 F86 What I Have I Hold ~ A wonderful bird is the Pelican its beak can hold more than its belly can.
Brian James
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Re: Destroyers: Fletcher Class

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Fletcher Class Destroyer USS Lewis Hancock pictured in August, 1952.
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Brian James
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Re: Destroyers: Fletcher Class

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Fletcher Class Destroyer USS Killen pictured off Puget Sound Navy Yard on June 1st 1944...She was launched on January 10th 1943, at Puget Sound Navy Yard, Bremerton; and commissioned on May 4th 1944. After shakedown Killen cleared Port Angeles, Wash. on August 19th 1944, escorted a convoy from Pearl Harbor and arrived at Manus, Admiralty Islands on September 14th. Following training exercises she departed Hollandia on October 12th with the Central Philippine Attack Force that arrived off San Pedro Bay on the 20th. For the next 5 days she gave day and night fire support to troops ashore on Leyte, and during one 30-minute period on the 21st silenced three enemy artillery positions. When the Japanese Navy decided to contest the landings in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, Killen's squadron engaged the enemy at Surigao Strait. On the morning of October 25th, at 03:25, she launched five torpedoes toward Battleship Yamashiro. One hit, slowing her to 5 knots, enabling other Destroyers to manoeuver for the kill. In the widespread fleet actions for Leyte, covering hundreds of thousands of nautical miles, the U.S. Fleet reduced the Japanese Fleet to an ineffective force thus greatly speeding up the advance toward Japan and end of the war. The veteran Destroyer served as a Target Ship during the atom bomb tests in 1958 (Operation Hardtack I, shots WAHOO and UMBRELLA), and in 1962 engaged in high explosive tests in the Chesapeake Bay to assess the structural effects of the ship's nuclear exposures. Killen was struck from the Navy List and sent to the US Naval Station at Roosevelt Roads, P.R. in January 1963 to be used as a Target Ship for missile and gunnery practice off the nearby Puerto Rican island of Vieques where she was eventually sunk/scuttled in a shallow bay in 1975 and still lies there today.
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Brian James
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Re: Destroyers: Fletcher Class

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Fletcher Class Destroyer USS Harrison pictured delivering droptanks by jackstay transfer to Carrier USS Bennington during operations off Okinawa on April 11th 1945...She was sold as-is to Mexico on August 19th 1970 and re-named BAM Cuauhtémoc, She was finally taken out of service in 1982 and scrapped.
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designeraccd
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Re: Destroyers: Fletcher Class

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Three views of the superb FLETCHER, first of the 175 ship class!! :D DFO
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