Word: battleships
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...year for ship and shore duty, the Navy had lined up 5,600 candidates for its first group. Specifications: single men, 21-to-26, with at least two years of college. Through the summer and fall the students got their seagoing foundation in ships of the Atlantic Fleet: the battleships Arkansas and New York, cruisers Quincy, Tuscaloosa, Wichita, Vincennes. After 25 days at sea they had the bare rudiments of navigation, gunnery, communications and seamanship, had also learned how to scrub their clothes white, how to face aft when they came over the side and salute the quarterdeck (where...
...that time there wasn't a Navy Yard in the U. S. big enough to handle a 70,000-ton battleship-let alone an 80,000-tonner. And Naval authorities doubted the wisdom of concentrating so much fighting power in a single hull. Such a giant ship would lack speed, maneuverability, would offer a much bigger target to air attack, would be unable to get through the Panama Canal. And its loss would be a staggering blow to any fleet. Nevertheless, the U. S. Navy has always believed that in a showdown between speed and gun power, gun power...
Pleased with the scare, the British gave a further nip to American adrenals by announcing that Germany's two powerful battle cruisers, the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau (each 26,000 tons, each faster and better-armed than the late pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spec), were indeed at large and as far west as the 42nd meridian. Displeased with the scare, the Axis press nevertheless aggravated it by jubilating at the alleged sinking of the first shipload of U. S. armaments bound for Britain under the Lend-Lease...
From a German newsman had come an "eyewitness story" which, if true, revealed one of the most devastating attacks British shipping had yet suffered. He was aboard a German surface raider (from its speed and gun-power, probably a pocket battleship), cruising the waters between Madeira and the Azores. Said he: "Tuesday we encountered an armed English merchantman. . . . This vessel was sunk by several well aimed salvos and soon only floating oranges marked the spot. . . . Soon after sunrise Wednesday, we saw three tiny shadows. Then we saw five, then six, then eight, and then more & more. We fired a first...
...bear for work. He has such a loud voice for commands that his underlings say that inter-ship signals in battle are just a waste of effort; and he is such an expert navigator that his crews say he could cut an egg in half with a battleship...