Ship Trivia Quiz

Y'know, Alumni72, I'm going to have to give it to you because, after looking closer at my information, it wouldn't be fair to you or the others trying to answer this one. Benjamin Franklin is the man in question but the ship I was referring to was the USS Bonhomme Richard (CV-31). She overlapped the USS Franklin and the USS Benjamin Franklin. I didn't realize that particular little glitch until you mentioned the boomer and I checked the commissioning and decommissioning dates of the three. Franklin and Benjamin Franklin didn't overlap so your answer wasn't entirely what I was looking for but it did show the invalidity of the question.

The original Bonhomme Richard was named for B. Franklin and CV-31 carried on that honor.

You are up, alumni72

I feel bad now - that was a pretty good question and I pretty much short-circuited it.  In fact it was a REALLY good question. 

I saw that the dates might have overlapped, if only by days, perhaps, but I didn't have official info in front of me.  But the Bonhomme Richard - wow. I just wish I'd thought of that!

I'll need to do it justice - stand by for a (hopefully) good one.

OK, I'll take the bait.

The HMS Victory is located in Drydock at Portsmouth England in company with the HMS Warrior and the Mary Rose nearby.

Tom S.

To be really precise, she is in the oldest drydock in the world -  No. 2 dock at Her Majesty's Naval Base Portsmouth (HMS Nelson).

Rick

eaglecentral gets it first. Let's get on with the quiz!  GO!

Hey Rick, when was drydock 2 built?

Ahoy subfixer and RickF,

I had the great honor of being piped onboard the HMS Victory in 1981 when I was a US Navy Ensign visiting Portsmouth.  Standing on the same deck where Nelson commanded and was killed was awe inspiring.

New QUESTION:  The ship pictured here transiting the Panama Canal had a long history and led two lives.  She was launched in 1898 and remained in active service until 1955.  Describe this ship's two careers and what were her two names?

Tom S.

jayman1,

you got it.

In 1939, Crane Ship 1 (AB-1) picked the USS Squalus SS-192, off the sea floor in 250 feet of water off of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.  AB-1 got around, I've seen pictures of it at Puget Sound, Portsmouth, VA, and Philadelphia, PA.

You get the next question jayman1.

Just sneaking in here to answer Subfixer's earlier question. The Number 2 Dry Dock in Portsmouth is reputed to have been built in 1495.

Rick

Thanks, This should be easy to keep this moving on.

 They had scheduled six but in the end result there were only five. Yet they created what some have called the second Pearl Harbor and shook up the US Navy early in 1942. What were they? How did they cause so much stress?

Ahoy jayman1,

This is a reference to Operation Drumbeat, Admiral Doenitz asked for 12 type IX submarines for an offensive beginning in January of 1942.  Berlin only allowed him six, but one of them didn't make it because of mechanical problems.

The operation's objective was to attack US merchant shipping along the United States eastern shore.  It was wildly successfull, some say because Admiral King's anglophobia made him refuse to follow anti-submarine practices developed by Britain prior to US entry into WWII.  Almost completely unopposed, the Germans had a field day, sinking ships within sight of Atlantic City and elsewhere, the German crews called the first six months of WWII the happy time.

King discovered that the soulution was to follow the British example of convoys and ASW patrols, but that was only after he was in the middle of a major disaster.

Tom S.

eaglecentral, you've got it.

Michael Gannon was very critical of both Admirals King and Andrews in his book Operation Drumbeat and brings up the points you mention. However, Clair Blair is equally critical of Gannon's line of thinking in his his two volume Hitler's U-Boat War. Blair points out, among other things, that the US just did not have the vessels for any convoy escort. King did the only two things he could have done: He conducted anti-sub patrols and scrounged for more vessels.

At the end of December 1941, the US had only 20 vessels available fo defense on the eastern seaboard. A mere 5 months later, we had a convoy system in place for the east coast, complete with escort vessels and air support. The second "happy time" was virtually over. In my view, this reflects credit on both King and Andrews.

Anyway, eaglecentral, over to you for your question.

OK, here's a new QUESTION:

Dead Reckoning navigation is only as good as the navigator, his compass, his chronometer, his speed, wind and current data.  However, before electronic navigation aids came along, dead reckoning was all the sailor had if he couldn't see the stars.  When a sailor has an electronic navigation aid, but doesn't use it because the technology is new, it is a recipe for disaster as  happened to this unlucky group of US Navy ships who became victims of the largest peacetime disaster in US Navy history.  Describe this event.

Hint:  New warships & new technology.

I think that you may be refering to DESRON 11's four stackers piling onto the rocks at Honda, on the California coast in 1923. 

In the chartroom of the flotilla's flagship was a cocky, ex-Academy navigation instructor who did not trust the new fangled radio beaon technology, and didn't wan't to slow down for soundings since Desron 11 was on an engineering run. 

Seven destroyers and 23 men were lost.
 

schoonerbumm,

I can't vouch for the cockiness of the navigator, but everything else is spot-on.  The lead ship, the USS Delphy, DD-261, was equipped with a radio navigational receiver that received a signal from the Point Arguello RDF beacon located just a little south of Honda.  Rather than believe the RDF signal that told hime he was turning too early, COMDESRON 11 chose to rely on the dead reckoning course he had calculated and made his turn anyway.

Mr. schoonerbumm, it's your question.

Delphy's commander and on duty navigator, Lieutenant Commander Donald T. Hunter was court martialed and found guilty of culpable inefficiency and negligence, and lost 100 numbers on the list of Lieutenant Commanders... and later served as the navigator on Nevada and First Lieutenant on Oklahoma.

But Delphy wasn't the first four stack destroyer to play chicken with the west coast.

Which one was?

schoonerbumm,

Could it be the USS DeLong, DD-126?  The DeLong jumped the rocks in the fog and landed in Half Moon Bay California on December 1, 1921.

Half Moon Bay is where Sam Spade went on a wild goose chase while looking for the Maltese Falcon.

Tom S.

New QUESTION:

Most everybody knows about Reuben James.  He was the sailor who threw himself in front of a Barbary  Pirate blade to save the life of Stephen Decatur during the raid into Tripoli harbor in 1804 to burn the USS Philadelphia.  The USS Reuben James, DD-245, named after the heroic sailor, was the first US warship sunk by enemy action during WWII.  The U-552 torpedoed it on October 31, 1941 while the ship was escorting convoys as part of the neutrality patrol.

What was the name of the other US sailor accredited with the same act of heroism for which Reuben James was honored?  Was there ever a ship named after him?

Give yourself an extra five points if you don't have to look this one up.

Tom S.

ahoy subfixer,

In my enthusiasm to write this question I can see how I failed to be specific and how the question could be interpreted differently from my intention, so......

I am referring to the single act of heroism attributed to Reuben James; that is, the act of putting his body between a pirate blade and Stephen Decatur, thus, saving Decatur from injury or death.  A different sailor is also reputed to have performed this particular act instead of Reuben James.  The name of the sailor other than Reuben James is the one I am looking for and was a ship ever named for this 2nd sailor.

Hope this helps.

Tom S.

I had to look it up, but it wasn't too hard to find.

However, I shall hold my tongue (or my fingers?), because I dropped the ball last time.  Sorry about that.