USS England's Twelve Days

this episode of the history guy brought to you by Magellan TV it was December 7th 1941 and the United States Naval Reserve ensign John Charles England was serving in the radio room aboard the battleship USS Oklahoma he actually hadn't been scheduled for duty that morning he hadn't traded ships his young wife Helen Elaine whom they called Lainey was due to arrive the next day and she was bringing with her their newborn daughter Victoria whom he was yet to meet and so he had traded shifts so that he would have more time with them when they arrived the Oklahoma was moored to berth fox5 that day next to the battleship Maryland and was one of the first ships attacked by torpedo planes of the acog II and the kaga the Nevada class battleship took three torpedoes in quick secession and then she started to roll to capsize struck by two more instant england survived those initial attacks he could have made it free but instead he chose to go back inside the battleship and lead a shipmate to safety he went back in two more times and rescued two warship mates but when he went in a fourth time never came back out who was officially listed as missing one of four hundred twenty-nine officers and enlisted men to die on the battleship Oklahoma in the Japanese attack he was just four days shy of his 21st birthday his daughter Tora never met her father I was exactly two years later on December 10th 1943 a new Buckley class destroyer escort who was commissioned was christened the USS England in his honor and it's extraordinary service would well demonstrate the change in tactics in technology and in the fortunes of war that had occurred in the intervening two years it is history that deserves to be remembered but before we talk about the USS England I want to take a moment to mention today's sponsor Magellan TV I've talked to a couple of times about Magellan TV and I have to tell you that I really love the service because if you like the history guy you'll almost certainly like Magellan TV there are lots of streaming TV services these days but Magellan TV is special it's aster in service for great premium in-depth documentaries Magellan has documentaries more than 1500 them on nature and science and of course history the selections are carefully curated so you can find the ones you want they're all high quality including 4k resolution made by documentary filmmakers they put on new content all the time and with the streaming service there are no ads or interruptions you can watch Magellan TV using mobile apps or your devices you can use it on fire TV Apple TV and Roku so you can pretty much watch in the end where you want to if you're interested in the Pacific campaign and the second world wars is the topic of today's episode then I think you'll really enjoy the Magellan documentary on the bombing of Darwin in February of 1942 which was in many ways as bad as Pearl Harbor just not nearly as well known it's a very compelling documentary that includes a lot of first-hand accounts and to my mind it justifies the monthly cost of the Magellan subscription all by itself so if you sign up for Magellan and really you should using the link that's in our description below you'll get the first month free it was many teams 1944 and the 306 footlong 1,400 long tonne displacement destroyer USS England was leading Tuilagi harbor in the Solomon Islands England was under the command of Lieutenant Commander Walter beet Pendleton a graduate of the u.s. Naval Academy Pendleton had commanded the Lapwing class minesweeper USS turn during the attack of Pearl Harbor the turn was credited with shooting down two Japanese aircraft and had rescued survivors of the Arizona England had arrived in the solomon islands in march and wild had done escort duty between the New Hebrides in Guadalcanal it was yet to see combat Pendleton and USS England were anxious to repay the Imperial Japanese Navy for Pearl Harbor five days earlier in some 2,000 miles away at truc Harbor in the Caroline Islands Lieutenant Commander Yoshitaka Taguchi in command of a type c1 Japanese submarine i-16 who's preparing to get underway on a mission to supply a Japanese garrison on Bougainville Island in New Guinea the kuchi radioed the headquarters of submarine squadron 7 located on Saipan and the Mariana Islands estimating his arrival at Bougainville on may 22nd kikuchi did not know that the u.s. navy had eavesdropped on his message the Japanese naval code called jn-25 was different than the mechanically ciphered German Enigma code jn-25 was a book cipher where the sender writes the message and then encodes it using a codebook even before the war the US had had success with Japanese naval codes which were vulnerable to standard cryptological attacks such as frequency analysis cracking the code required deducing the means meanings of phrases in each new codebook but although the code books were changed frequently they were not changed radically code breakers at Pearl Harbor had cracked the code in 1942 allowing them to predict the Japanese attack a Midway Island the US had been careful using the knowledge gained from their code breaking to assist u.s. submarines which when combined with the development of more reliable torpedoes had significant improvement in formation with severing hunters was relatively new england was dispatched along with the buckley class destroyer escorts USS George and USS Ray B to track down the i-16 they departed to loggy Harbor on May 18th and on May 19th the u.s. plane spotted the i-16 on the surface alerted Raby George and England rushed to the location of the sighting and conducted what was called a line abreast radar sweep the line of breast sweep allows ships to combine their search creating a large entrapment triangle in front of the vessels the ships in a line of breast formation are close enough for convenient communications know the positions of their fellow ships in addition ships are in a position to coordinate during attack once a contact is made the England's salmon John deep rock was the first to make contact he announced contact bearing 305 degrees range 1800 yards they radioed the officer in tactical command aboard the USS George England would go in for the attack while George and Ray B would circle some 2,000 yards out preventing the i-16 from escaping Pendleton first ordered a non firing run to confirm the contact was a submarine and made its first firing run it was England's first attack against a live target the England was armed with a weapon that was relatively new to the Pacific Theater the mark 10 hedgehog anti-submarine mortar the Hedgehog had been designed by the British in 1941 was first used in 1942 but didn't become widely available until late 1943 the Hedgehog was designed to fire a spread of 24 anti-submarine projectiles to this a hundred yards ahead of the ship each projectile had a contact fuse that detonated on impact with a submarine one of the projectiles had a submarine there would be an explosion the Hedgehog could be reloaded in about three minutes for a repeat attack although the explosive charge of the Hedgehog projectile was smaller than a standard depth charge a contact explosion of only one would usually be sufficient to breach the submarines hull and sink it the first is how were fired but there were no explosions submarine had been making a hard right and the England had failed to lead her enough and missed to the left England regain contact and fired again this time the Hedgehog exploded but the England could not detect signs that the submarine had been damaged the i-16 had nine war patrols during the war and - coochy was an experienced captain he moved the submarine behind the England masking his sound in their wake but England made contact again throwing out another deadly Hedgehog salvo but the i-16 was deeper than anticipated and again the hedgehogs exploded a fourth attack also missed the kuchi was throwing his rudder side-to-side to evade the attack but the England was on to his game sound recorder five to six hits with the fifth attack but still was the i-16 sunk the answer came two minutes later the explosion of the i-16 was so powerful and lifted the fantail of the England six inches out of the water by 16 was lost with all hands there was some poetic justice I 16 had been at Pearl Harbor had launched one of five-minute submarines intended to attack inside the harbour in her first combat USS England had gained some revenge for the young ensign after whom she was named but there was more to come the Imperial Japanese Navy was attempting a desperate action called Operation hago to draw the u.s. fleet into a decisive engagement in support seven Japanese submarines of the seventh submarine squadron had been sent to establish a line to intercept the predicted path of US aircraft carriers the US had caught an odd bit of luck a US aircraft had observed the submarine ro 104 and radioed a contact report the Japanese had intercepted the communication and as a result had ordered the succes brains to relocate their line to the south the US had intercepted those orders and from the communication the location of the submarines the George Raby in England were dispatched to hunt them down the three destroyers were moving on the base course of 321° separated at four thousand yard intervals George made the first contact on the medium-size rro one hundred class ro 106 on May 22nd under the command of Lieutenant Kotaku de the ro 106 was on her 11th war patrol George and ray be moved in for the attack while England was ordered to stand off to hit the submarine escaping George cough the r106 by surprise still in the surface but the summary managed to crash dive tried to escape George made a hedgehog attack but squirt no hits the RO 106 ran under England who also missed with a hedgehog salvo but the ro 106 turned to possibly intent on making a torpedo attack on the USS England it was a mistake England's second salvo recorded three explosions the next morning a large oil slick confirmed that the ro 106 had been destroyed England's second kill in four days the squadron now knew whether the Japanese line of submarines was planned to roll down that line the next to be cited was ro 104 under the command of lieutenant Hisashi is sue BG on May 23rd an aircraft's ended the submarine first and the group moved in for the kill ray be made the first contact but failed to score any hits in for Hedgehog salvos George moved in and fired a salvo but again ro 104 minutes to avoid being hit his ax B tchy went deep tried to escape but George regain contact finding three more salvos but scouring no heads frustrated the England was called in the first salvo missed but the second scored 10 to 12 hits followed a few minutes later by the sound of ro 104 exploding England had her third kill since May 19th John Williamson who is executive officer aboard the England recalls bumping into a young sailor who asked him Sir how many men were on the submarine were just destroyed Williamson answered that it depended upon the type of submarine but between 40 and 80 men they say we looked at him Sir how do you feel about coming all those men Williamson answered this is war the choice is kill or be killed USS George was the first to cite the RO 116 of the Lieutenant Commander Takeshi okapi on the morning of May 24th England rushed to the scene a copy was clever using a technique called counter pinging using his sonar ping to confuse England's sonar Pendleton decided on a ruse sewing his own son our pings making appear that England thought that the summary was farther away than it was thinking he had fooled them Oh Kabul stop counter pinging and went to full stop but England had him targeted better than he realized England's first salvo scored five hits it took some time to confirm but England had scored its fourth kill but now all three of the escorts were low on fuel and ammunition 100 killer force consisting of the escort carrier USS Hoggett Bay and three destroyers arrived on May 26th and the three destroyer escorts were sent to Manus Island and New Guinea to refuel and rearm but they were not anxious to give the chase and so steered a path to Manus that would take them across the assumed location of the southwest end of the Japanese line of submarines about 110 nautical miles northeast of Manus Island Raby caught a sonar contact rabies first Hedgehog attack missed and England moved in Williamson recalled some concern England only had enough hedgehogs for two more attacks they only needed one the ro 108 on her fifth war patrol was England's fifth victim in the early morning hours of May 30th England Raby and George had been joined by another destroyer escort the USS Spangler the Fletcher class destroyer USS Hazelwood screening the Hoggett Bay had made a contact but its depth charge attacks had been unsuccessful the submarine was the Arnold 105 and had captain Renault Suki Kato commander of Japanese submarine division 51 aboard one of their most experienced submarine errs Cato had managed to keep breaking contact by the next day the destroyers were still in pursuit commander Haynes the officer and tactical commander OTC aboard the George held England back ordering them to stand off Raby George and Spangler all made attacks with George apparently scoring some hits but Cato managed to keep the submarine alive finally Haines exasperated radioed oh hell go ahead England England charge cut a good son our contact and scored six hits and her first salvo Haines radioed goddamnit how do you do it USS England's impressive six submarine kills in 12 days is a feat that is unparalleled in the annals of anti-submarine warfare but it demonstrates the change in technology and tactics in coordination that occurred of the course of the Pacific War of approximately 25 Japanese submarines that were deployed in May and June of 1944 17 were sunk USS England received the Presidential Unit Citation and Lieutenant Commander Pendleton received the Navy Cross and a promotion to Commander but the England would go on to see another change in tactics that occurred over the course of the Pacific War she was on picket duty in May of 1945 near the island of Okinawa when she was attacked by three kamikaze aircraft despite her guns sitting on a fire it managed to strike her on the starboard side just below the bridge they managed to save the ship and fight the fires but 37 members of England's crew were killed 25 more were wounded she limped back to the United States and was going to be converted to a high-speed transport but with the end of the war was decided that her damage was not worth repair England was stricken from the rolls sold for scrap and will earn his king have been the chief of naval operations during the Second World War said after England's success in the spring of 1944 that there will always be an England in the United States Navy and that promise was kept in the form of the Leahy class guided missile cruiser USS England which proudly served the nation for more than 30 years between 1963 and 1994 I hope you enjoyed this episode of the history guy short snippets a forgotten history between 10 and 15 minutes long and if you did enjoy please go ahead and click that thumbs up button if you have any questions or comments or suggestions for future episodes please write those in the comment section I will be happy to personally 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Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 320,097

Rating: 4.9618235 out of 5

Keywords: history, the history guy, history guy, us history, us navy, military history, world war ii, wwii, uss england

Id: iCLPtSMTXug

Length: 15min 48sec (948 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 30 2019