USS Johnston: World's deepest shipwreck

[Authentic]

The Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944 effectively knocked the Japanese Navy out of the war.

But they fought hard. They especially did some damage around the island of Samar, alongside the superdeep Phillipine Trench, sinking several U.S. ships.

One of those was the USS Johnston, which a Japanese captain saluted as she sank under the waves, an acknowledgment of her valiant fight for survival and tactical success.

As much propaganda that was fed Americans during WW2, the Japanese were and are not barbarians. When they would execute American officer POWs (yeah, I know that you are thinking that execution is barbaric, but think of the food shortages that come with war and consider that starvation might be a worse fate), they would feed tge prisoners well beforehand (go ahead with your fattened up for the slaughter cliches) and behead them using a Japanese officer of at least equal rank of the highest ranking officer to die.

Anyway, Johnston went down to the deep with 183 crewmembers.

Really deep.

She came to rest at 21,800 feet - the deepest shipwreck on record.

Down so deep in freezing water where very little life can survive, the ship remains in pristine condition, looking as if she could still battle the Japanese warships from her watery grave.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/2...pest-shipwreck

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Johnston_(DD-557)

[Freewill]

I guess the Japanese were OK guys, if you forget the Battan Death March or the Rape of Nanking.

[Authentic]

I guess the Japanese were OK guys, if you forget the Battan Death March or the Rape of Nanking.

I forget nothing (well, I do when I drink too much - but nothing important).

Americans weren't saints either.

War is war, and boys will be boys.

[Authentic]

For reference, Titanic lays deep, but only at about 12,500 feet.

[Old Tex]

I guess the Japanese were OK guys, if you forget the Battan Death March or the Rape of Nanking.

Two comments:

1. When I was a kid (like 6 or so) one of our neighbors was a survivor of the Battan Death March. He survived it but within a few months back after the war he was riding a motorcycle & got hit by a car. He was in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Once I was old enough to really understand what he had gone though I felt really bad for him.

2. If you want to feel proud of being an American you should read up on the USS Johnston & the last battle. Back then, well those were REAL AMERICANS.

[ruthless terrier]

.

[Crusader]

3.7 miles deep, damn.

Different culture, Japanese believed any man that surrendered was a coward and not worth living. They were barbaric by our standards and most of the western worlds standards. Like the Nazis their way of thinking and acting was not compatible with the rest of the world, leaving their country destroyed and occupied was the only outcome there could be. Their ideals as with the Nazis was to archaic and inhuman to ever survive the modern world.

[Traddles]

The Battle of Leyte Gulf had IJN forces coming in 3 (or 3.5) major groups. The carriers, whose air groups had largely been depleted by being thrown into the maw of a USN attack on Formosa, came from Japan. The main force and another group came from the south, with the main force intending to attack through the San Bernardino Strait. The other force (or force and a half) was to attack through the Surigao Strait, forming a sort of pincer to attack US landing forces off Leyte.

The carrier force was a decoy, to lure Admiral Halsey's Third Fleet away from Leyte Gulf, and was successful. The force attacking through Surigao Strait may also have been a decoy. Its major components were two aging, not well maintained, battleships and a heavy cruiser, with a trailing force (three more cruisers with destroyers). They were potent enough to be a threat, and if they were also bait, they lured away Admiral Oldendorf's Seventh Fleet, which were a part of the landing fleet, several modernized battleships too slow to steam with the carriers (other than the slower escort carriers), groups of heavy and light cruisers, and several destroyer squadrons. Halsey's Third Fleet left the landing area and all but wiped out the IJN carrier force. Admiral Oldendorf's Seventh Fleet sank the battleships in Surigao Strait and some of the escorting destroyers.

The IJN's main force included the super-battleships Yamato and Musashi, three other battleships, ten heavy cruisers, a couple of light cruisers, and the destroyer squadrons commanded by the light cruisers. As they steamed west of the Philippines, Musashi was sunk by carrier aircraft attacks, two heavy cruisers were sunk and a third seriously damaged by submarines. The force did a course reversal that apparently fooled Halsey into thinking they had turned to go "home", but after dark turned around again. The following morning the main force entered Leyte Gulf and fought a pitched battle with a task group of escort carriers (CVEs) and the CVEs' escorting destroyers (DDs) (USS Johnston was among them) and a destroyer escort (DE). The USN DDs and DE fought pretty much to the death, peppering battleships' and cruisers' superstructures (with some hits by some of the CVE's) and forcing IJN ships to break formation and scatter to avoid torpedo attacks. IIRC, one IJN cruiser was sunk by a DD torpedo, and another IJN cruiser was sunk by one of the planes from a CVE. USS Johnston and another DD and the DE sunk when they attacked the IJN force. One CVE was sunk and several others damaged. To complete what was supposed to be a brief account, the DDs and DE caused enough damage and disruption that the IJN admiral in command decided it was too risky to take the time to reassemble his formation, and the main forced headed "home".

In the week or so following these engagements, some of the surviving IJN cruisers and destroyers were hunted down by US air groups and sunk.

*************************

There were no atrocities committed by the allies in the Pacific remotely equivalent in scale to the Rape of Nanking OR the Bataan Death March OR Unit 731 OR the Hell Ships OR the Burma Railway.

[Common]

The Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944 effectively knocked the Japanese Navy out of the war.

But they fought hard. They especially did some damage around the island of Samar, alongside the superdeep Phillipine Trench, sinking several U.S. ships.

One of those was the USS Johnston, which a Japanese captain saluted as she sank under the waves, an acknowledgment of her valiant fight for survival and tactical success.

As much propaganda that was fed Americans during WW2, the Japanese were and are not barbarians. When they would execute American officer POWs (yeah, I know that you are thinking that execution is barbaric, but think of the food shortages that come with war and consider that starvation might be a worse fate), they would feed tge prisoners well beforehand (go ahead with your fattened up for the slaughter cliches) and behead them using a Japanese officer of at least equal rank of the highest ranking officer to die.

Anyway, Johnston went down to the deep with 183 crewmembers.

Really deep.

She came to rest at 21,800 feet - the deepest shipwreck on record.

Down so deep in freezing water where very little life can survive, the ship remains in pristine condition, looking as if she could still battle the Japanese warships from her watery grave.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/2...pest-shipwreck

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Johnston_(DD-557)

read the book King Rat about american and british prisoners of war of Japan

[Lone Gunman]

3.7 miles deep, damn.

Different culture, Japanese believed any man that surrendered was a coward and not worth living. They were barbaric by our standards and most of the western worlds standards. Like the Nazis their way of thinking and acting was not compatible with the rest of the world, leaving their country destroyed and occupied was the only outcome there could be. Their ideals as with the Nazis was to archaic and inhuman to ever survive the modern world.

maybe, but their country and their culture remains, for the most part, unsullied by any compulsion to import re-FOOG-ees and third world immigrants to debase it and dilute the ancient ancestry shared by their people. they're not obsessively 'woke' when it comes to coddling the myriad forms of faggotry, either.

archaic, perhaps, but certainly admirable compared to the wholesale inclination toward self-destruction that seems to infect europeans in the west.