Word: torpedos
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Destroyers are built to hand out punishment, not to take it. If a lurking submarine gets in the first punch, they have not much chance, especially old four-pipers like the Jacob Jones. The "Jakie," as her crew called her, was off Cape May, N.J. when the first torpedo crumpled her bow, probably killing every officer and man on the bridge and most of the men in the forward sleeping quarters. Less than a minute later, a second torpedo blew in the stern, exploding some of the destroyer's own depth charges. Four men tried to launch a lifeboat...
...great Japanese convoy of 40 transports, 20 warships. The transports stayed well away from the naval combatants-a precautionary measure which they seemed to follow throughout the Java invasion. At twelve-mile range the Allied cruisers loosed their main batteries on the Japanese. Destroyers closed with shell and torpedo fire. A Japanese heavy cruiser sank. Another Jap cruiser-the Mogami, whose main batteries had apparently been converted from 6.1-to 8-in. guns-retired in flames. Hits crippled a third 8-in. gun cruiser. Three Jap destroyers blazed up, appeared to be sinking when the attackers last saw them...
...plans and naval expansion. Their plan was offensive: continuous reconnaissance, hard and rapid stabs at the Jap, as far away from the Indies as possible. Their new Navy was geared to this plan. When war came they had five light cruisers, eight destroyers, 20 submarines and about 30 torpedo boats, designed for maneuver in the narrow Indies waters. They also had a small but growing naval air force...
...group of sailors was standing in the stern of the W. D. Anderson, chewing the fat about foreign ports. One of them, Frank Leonard Terry, was a strong swimmer; he used to be a lifeguard. When the torpedo hit, he jumped overboard at once, without a life belt, while the rest hesitated. A billowing tower of fire and smoke swallowed the ship, and fire spread over the water. In the icy water Sailor Terry stripped off his clothes and swam hard for an hour, to get away from the fire. He could feel the heat of it on the back...
...Eugen, a fast and tough 10,000-ton cruiser, had slipped out of Brest with the battleships. She could be a scourge to Atlantic convoys. Last week First Lord of the Admiralty A. V. Alexander announced that a 10,000-ton German cruiser, apparently the Eugen, had taken a torpedo in the North Sea from a British submarine. The Eugen has multi-compartment torpedo protection: but, like the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, she was laid up for a while...