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Ship Trivia Quiz

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  • Member since
    November 2006
  • From: United States
Posted by ww2modeler on Sunday, January 13, 2008 3:36 PM

Okay, a REALLY easy one.

Which ship is this, what happened, and when.

David

On the bench:

1/35 Tamiya M26 Pershing-0%

1/144 Minicraft P-38J Lightning-50%

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  • Member since
    December 2002
  • From: Naperville, IL
Posted by jlbishop on Sunday, January 13, 2008 4:01 PM

It was the USS Missouri...

From Wikipedia....

Now the only U.S. battleship in commission, Missouri was proceeding seaward on a training mission from Hampton Roads early on 17 January 1950 when she ran aground 1.6 miles (3.0 km) from Thimble Shoals Light, near Old Point Comfort. She hit shoal water a distance of three ship lengths from the main channel. Lifted some seven feet above waterline, she stuck hard and fast.[4] Seizing the opportunity to criticize the United States, the Soviet Union ran a story in its naval publication Red Fleet which criticized the grounding of the battleship.[10] With the aid of tugboats, pontoons, and an incoming tide, she was refloated on 1 February 1950 and repaired shortly thereafter.[4]

  • Member since
    November 2006
  • From: United States
Posted by ww2modeler on Sunday, January 13, 2008 4:50 PM

You got it.

David

On the bench:

1/35 Tamiya M26 Pershing-0%

1/144 Minicraft P-38J Lightning-50%

Numerous 1/35 scale figures in various stages if completion.

 

  • Member since
    December 2002
  • From: Naperville, IL
Posted by jlbishop on Sunday, January 13, 2008 6:10 PM

At Pearl Harbor PT-27, 29, 30 and 42 went to war with the rest of the US Navy.  What was unusual about their circumstances?

 

 

  • Member since
    February 2016
Posted by alumni72 on Sunday, January 13, 2008 7:07 PM
I'm guessing they were loaded on board another ship?
  • Member since
    December 2002
  • From: Naperville, IL
Posted by jlbishop on Sunday, January 13, 2008 8:21 PM

Your on the right track - I was hoping for something a bit more specific though!

 How about the name of the ship?

 :-)

John

  • Member since
    February 2016
Posted by alumni72 on Monday, January 14, 2008 3:08 AM
The USS Idunno?
  • Member since
    December 2002
  • From: Naperville, IL
Posted by jlbishop on Monday, January 14, 2008 10:11 AM

I'd like to leave it open for a bit....I can provide some hints that will make this pretty easy for anyone with internet access to figure out....

 

John

  • Member since
    May 2005
  • From: Waltham MA
Posted by runkel on Monday, January 14, 2008 11:16 AM

PTs 27, 29, 30, and 42 were in cradles resting on the Ramapo's deck.

 

 

Jim 

Jim
  • Member since
    December 2002
  • From: Naperville, IL
Posted by jlbishop on Tuesday, January 15, 2008 4:33 PM

You got it!  Over to you!

The PT's had their engines mothballed to reduce the risk of fire during transit - this meant that they couldn't fire up the engines to get the compressed air the weapons mounts needed to operate.

They worked around it by cutting the compressed air lines and having one person fire the weapon, another move the mount, while a third acted as a spotter.

 The boats were also _really_ close to the Ramapo's weapons and were subject to a pretty severe beating from the back blast.

 Also while we're on the subject of the Ramapo - while I was looking for "hints", I found this:

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/watwav.html

112 ft waves - WOW.

John

  • Member since
    November 2006
  • From: United States
Posted by ww2modeler on Tuesday, January 15, 2008 4:58 PM

That is pretty cool, the biggest seas I've been in are 30ft. but that was on a cruise liner with stabilizers.

David

On the bench:

1/35 Tamiya M26 Pershing-0%

1/144 Minicraft P-38J Lightning-50%

Numerous 1/35 scale figures in various stages if completion.

 

  • Member since
    March 2004
  • From: Spartanburg, SC
Posted by subfixer on Tuesday, January 15, 2008 9:00 PM
When I was on the Ranger in 1973, we hit a storm that pushed green water over the flight deck (60 feet high) and spray and foam hit the  bridge windows at 90 feet. I don't remember the exact height of the seas ( it was fairly common to hit 50 footers out there in the Pacific at times) but these were extraordinarily big ones. The navigator said they were at least 70 footers but how he got that figure I'll never know. I think he was just trying to scare us although it wasn't that bad of a ride in that big old CVA and was actually kind of thrilling. The winds were only at gale force I think. .......Sorry to digress off the thread, let's get back to the quiz.

I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

  • Member since
    May 2005
  • From: Waltham MA
Posted by runkel on Wednesday, January 16, 2008 10:16 AM

subfixer, this will be way to easy for you. 

Name the 3 US ships? 

">

Jim
  • Member since
    May 2003
  • From: Greenville, NC
Posted by jtilley on Wednesday, January 16, 2008 11:28 AM
Looks like Battleship Cove in Fall River, Massachusetts.  If so, the battleship is the Massachusetts, the destroyer is the Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., and the submarine is the Lionfish.

Youth, talent, hard work, and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery.

  • Member since
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  • From: Waltham MA
Posted by runkel on Wednesday, January 16, 2008 11:34 AM
jtilley, you got it and the 4th ship is Hiddensee. Your turn for the next question.
Jim
  • Member since
    May 2003
  • From: Greenville, NC
Posted by jtilley on Thursday, January 17, 2008 8:07 PM
Hmmm. I'm running out of ideas, but let's try this one.  It's a question used traditionally to haze plebes at the Naval Academy; it has, shall we say, an unconventional answer.  What's the longest ship in the U.S. Navy?

Youth, talent, hard work, and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery.

  • Member since
    February 2016
Posted by alumni72 on Thursday, January 17, 2008 9:27 PM

I think I remember this from the Revell box. Big Smile [:D] The USS Pittsburgh?

It's pretty hazy, but the bow was blown off by a torp and replaced in Noumea with a temporary bow, and then the ship sailed to the US and the original severed bow stayed in the Pacific.  Is that anywheres near being right?

  • Member since
    May 2003
  • From: Greenville, NC
Posted by jtilley on Friday, January 18, 2008 2:26 AM
Hmmm....An interesting, defensible answer - though not the classic, philosophically profound one I was looking for.  But you're thinking in the right direction.

Youth, talent, hard work, and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery.

  • Member since
    February 2016
Posted by alumni72 on Friday, January 18, 2008 8:24 AM

Philosophically profound plebes? Wow.  Just ... wow. Dunce [D)]

Well, I was close - the bow was torn off by a typhoon and towed to Guam.  Making the Pittsburgh the longest ship in the Navy at the time, with her bow in Guam and her stern in the US.

But I'm all about philosophical profundity, so I await the answer with great interest. Big Smile [:D]

  • Member since
    May 2005
  • From: Waltham MA
Posted by runkel on Friday, January 18, 2008 8:32 AM

jtilley

Is this a trick question. How about the USS Constitution  launched Oct 21 1797 and still commissioned today.

Jim
  • Member since
    May 2003
  • From: Greenville, NC
Posted by jtilley on Friday, January 18, 2008 9:51 AM

Nope; sorry.

Alumni 72's mind was operating in the correct cosmic zone, but the question was stated in the present tense.  (The Pittsburgh almost certainly did qualify at one point, but she's no longer with us.)

Sit back; relax; close your eyes; work yourself into a tubular, existential frame of mind.  Imbibe of some liquid refreshment and hyperventilate, if necessary.  Let the question wash over the subtler, more sensually-accute nodes of your conscious and subconscious (and maybe even unconscious) being.  You'll get it. 

Youth, talent, hard work, and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery.

  • Member since
    April 2005
Posted by ddp59 on Friday, January 18, 2008 2:24 PM
uss wisconsin with the bow of the uss kentucky which made the wisconsin longer then her sister ships?
  • Member since
    February 2006
  • From: Norfolk, UK
Posted by RickF on Friday, January 18, 2008 5:25 PM

Don't know a lot about the US Navy, but I'll bet the answer to this is a ship with a unit of measurement hidden somwhere in its name?

Rick

  • Member since
    May 2003
  • From: Greenville, NC
Posted by jtilley on Saturday, January 19, 2008 3:08 AM

Interesting approaches to the problem - but no.  (Several ships, including the big nuclear carriers, are longer than the Iowa-class battleships.) 

I really thought the classic answer to this question was fairly widely known.  Maybe it's time for a small hint.  Bonus points and a collection of antique popsickle sticks to the member who knows the relationship between the answer to this question and classical music.

Youth, talent, hard work, and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery.

  • Member since
    November 2006
  • From: United States
Posted by ww2modeler on Saturday, January 19, 2008 4:11 PM

Just a guess:

USS Leviathan which was a originally a German Liner that was interned by the US at the start of WW1.

David

On the bench:

1/35 Tamiya M26 Pershing-0%

1/144 Minicraft P-38J Lightning-50%

Numerous 1/35 scale figures in various stages if completion.

 

  • Member since
    May 2003
  • From: Greenville, NC
Posted by jtilley on Saturday, January 19, 2008 4:16 PM

Nope.  I'd have to look up the Leviathan's dimensions, but I'm pretty sure she was considerably shorter than quite a few later - and current - warships.

Also, note that the question was stated in the present tense.

Youth, talent, hard work, and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery.

  • Member since
    February 2006
  • From: Norfolk, UK
Posted by RickF on Saturday, January 19, 2008 6:35 PM

Can't claim any originality for this, but according to one website I've found (Roadsideamerica.com') .... "the USS Maine is known to historians as the longest ship in the US Navy, as built in Bath Maine, with relics, our cowl, the mast at the entrance of Arlington National Cemetery, the burial ground in Florida and beyond, the USS Maine stretches the entire length of the Eastern Seaboard..."

Don't fully understand the above, but is USS Maine the answer?

Rick

  • Member since
    April 2005
Posted by ddp59 on Saturday, January 19, 2008 6:36 PM

isn't there a freighter(s) or somethiing like that possibly a super tanker(s) recently acquired by the us navy fairly recently 2nd hand? remember seeing about that with in the past month or so. this ship(s) is longer then the cvn's by at least 100 feet if not more. 

  • Member since
    May 2003
  • From: Greenville, NC
Posted by jtilley on Sunday, January 20, 2008 12:43 AM

RickF got it.  Generations of Naval Academy plebes have learned from sadistic upper classmen that the longest ship in the U.S. Navy is the U.S.S. Maine, because her foremast is on the seawall of the Naval Academy campus and her mainmast stands on top of a memorial in Arlington National Cemetery.

(Brief pause for the electronic equivalent of vegetable throwing.)

After the Spanish-American War the remains of the Maine were raised from the bottom of Havana Harbor.  A Navy board of inquiry studied them and came to the conclusion (still hotly debated) that she had been sunk by an external explosive device.  The wreck was then towed out to sea and sunk, with military honors, in deep water - but not before both masts had been removed for preservation.

The foremast (which had been rather thoroughly mutilated by the explosion) was installed in a prominent location overlooking the water at the Naval Academy.  A few years later an impressive, walk-in monument, with the mainmast on top of it, was built at Arlington National Cemetery as a tomb and memorial for the ship's crew. 

The musical connection:  after the German/Soviet occupation of Poland in 1939 the great Polish pianist and statesman Ignacy Paderewski, who, after a long career as a concert artist, had served as prime minister of Poland during the inter-war period, agreed to serve as president of the newly-created Polish Parliament in Exile.  In late 1940 he went to the United States (having previously been living in Switzerland); a few months later, in June 1941, he died.  His family, and the staff of the Polish embassy in Washington, felt it was obviously most appropriate that Paderewski be buried in Poland, but that wasn't practical.  President Roosevelt offered to make a spot in Arlington available as a temporary resting place.  Since he had never served in the U.S. armed forces or the armed forces of a nation allied with the U.S., however, Paderewski was not eligible for "burial" at Arlington.  So his coffin was placed, above ground, inside the Maine monument.  FDR said, "he may lie there until Poland is free."  In 1992 Paderewski's body was removed from the monument and, accompanied by a military guard of honor, flown to Poland for permanent interment at St. John's Cathedral in Warsaw.  (His heart, according to his own wishes, is encased in a monument at a church in the Polish-American community of Doylestown, Pennsylvania.)

The Maine monument has had one other temporary resident.  President Manuel Quezon y Molina, President of the Philippines, died in the United States in 1944.  His body was placed in the Maine monument until it could be returned to the Philippines, after the American/Filipino reoccupation.

RickF - the next question is yours! 

Youth, talent, hard work, and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery.

  • Member since
    August 2005
  • From: Seattle, WA
Posted by Surface_Line on Sunday, January 20, 2008 2:32 AM

<please insert here the digital equivalent of a bronx cheer>

 Being a naval officer who was commissioned from the enlisted ranks, I always had issues with questions like that.  The Naval Academy frequently seems to have a way to miss the most important of the obvious.

Prof. Tilley - you have let me down.  You said the question was in the present tense.  I could see the Constitution filling the "present tense" requirement, if there were parts spread about the country, but just as you said about the Pittsburgh, the Maine is no longer with us. Blah.  Only in the minds of USNA midshipmen.

<end of rant>  I'm sure the next question will be better. :-)

Rick H 

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