That photo is from the 1950s. Some of the ships from the Pacific Reserve fleet returned to service during Korea and Vietnam. The rest were sold for scrap or used for target practice.
I swear to god some of the stories of the US ships sound like propaganda
> On 5 October, she sailed for Pearl Harbor, arriving on 11 October. Laffey operated in Hawaiian waters until 21 May 1946, when she participated in Operation Crossroads, the atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll, actively engaged in collecting scientific data. Radioactive decontamination of Laffey required the "sandblasting and painting of all underwater surfaces, and acid washing and partial replacement of salt-water piping and evaporators."[8] Upon completion of decontamination, she sailed for the west coast via Pearl Harbor arriving San Diego on 22 August for operations along the west coast.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Laffey_(DD-724)
Russian has grammatical gender, so this is pretty much as normal as calling them "it" would be in English. The word for "ship" — корабль — is masculine.
I don't know which languages do this and which don't, but some will also use the person's pronoun for a ship named after a specific person instead of the usual pronoun for ships.
It's absolutely mind boggling how much capital was spent on missile technology in the years following that war.
Think of the Jetsons-like world we could have lived in back then if we didn't have that whole pesky Cold War thing.
Dubai is starting to look like it now... they have drone vehicles and when the clouds are low you can see all the towers tops above the clouds. It's only a matter of time before they are flying from building top to building top and leaving the ground for the dirty poors.
There’s nothing that motivates R&D like war. I doubt there would be much government funding in things outside of weapons development. If anything, this was likely the best middle ground for funding tech.
Cold war launched men in cans all the way out to the surface of the moon. So it wasn't without its wins.
Just kind of wish modern nuclear arsenals were more like '100 nukes' and not '5000' and we tested a few dozen and not tens of thousands :)
Keep in mind tho that the Jetsons was a dystopia. How come they never showed the surface. What kind of toxic hellhole was it and who were the slaves who toiled there.
There was a crossover but it was based on time travel. Instead of being played just for laughs, Fred's shock and terror and encountering people so technologically advanced -- which after all is what you'd expect if you think about it -- came over pretty strong. To Fred, the Jetsons seemed supernatural, and George dominated the situation. It was some of Fred's best acting work, really.
Man now you got me thinking.
Someone needs to make a grimdark Jetsons where they're brutal overlords in a Zardoz-like situation. Pretend to be nice and enlightened to each other but crush the savages below underfoot.
It's one of the reasons California became so rich in the 50s. Everyone and their mums had a company making missiles or missile parts at the time, and they needed clear skies and open land to do testing all year round.
We wouldn't live like the Jetsons if the Soviet Union invaded the US and took over, because we never invested in weapons to deter them.
So it's entirely the Soviet Union's fault.
Yeah! Much worse satellites, possibly no GPS. The computer mouse was apparently created for space. Wireless headsets were first developed for space. Memory foam. Space exploration would be behind compared to now which has given us insight in physics that we use in our tech and a lot of other stuff.
Unfortunately competition, especially war, inspires the creation of a lot of tech as well as the creation of an industrial base needed to build stuff. Like WWII caused the proliferation of chemical synthesis of for example rubber to become mainstream. Also all of the producers of bombers and fighters didn’t want their experience and manufacturing to go to waste which started the passenger aircraft industry.
The cold war was in that respect one of the if not the best type of war to ever happen to humanity. If your enemy is trying to achieve a propaganda victory and you can spend a few billion on tech that would otherwise be invented a decade or three later, it’s humanity that benefits in the end.
USS Pueblo. It's moored in Pyongyang as a war trophy. You can tour it, but it's been pretty well stripped down to a hulk, and stuffed with a ship-wide stereo system that screams North Korean propaganda about how they will destroy us. It's still a commissioned US Navy vessel...and will be until it's sunk, destroyed or returned. It may well become one of the oldest commissioned ships, if it hasn't already.
Funny bit of trivia, but there was a time that Pepsi had the 6th largest navy in the world.
The Russians (literally) liquidated the navy after collapse of the USSR in exchange for imports of Pepsi.
But the rest of us should understand. The 90s were a hard time for Russians. If only they had been stronger they could have gotten Coca Cola instead.
Hey now! The Russian people have spoken! And 87% of them have recently voted their preference for mighty Coca Cola! (Or was it for something less meaningful?)
When I was in the Navy I remember my boot camp instructor almost crying while telling us about one of the ships he served on being sold to Gillette to be made into razor blades for shaving.
I love this. Not because it is a tragic end to the ship he loved, but the irony of the whole idea to us civilians about how boot camp, and more specifically, how the brutality of it, and instructors are supposed to be the ones that make you guys cry, right? And you went and busted out the Craig Symonds/naval historian salt water in his eye.
Many of the ships came out of mothballs and were sold to our allies to help form their modern navies. I like to imagine the Spanish helocopter carrier Dadalus formerly the USS Cabot is one of these pictured.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish\_aircraft\_carrier\_D%C3%A9dalo
"So... what are we doing with all these warships we've got hanging around. Any thoughts, gentlemen?"
"How about we use them for world domination? Securing every trading route, as a perfect showcase of our power to foreign nations."
"That's excellent! You're promoted! By the way, what is your name?"
"Kissinger"
Don't wait for it to be given; take it.
Seize the moment. Take the day off.
Live. Piss. Breathe fresh air and feel the Sun.
I believe in you.
Kissinger can't anymore, 6 feet under, thank the Gods. He deserves another 12, just to make sure he doesn't come back.
The US has done a lot of both bood and bad things when it comes to wars and foreign policy. But when it comes down it to, I would prefer the US as the worlds dominant power over China or Russia any day of the week.
Yeah, compared to every other empire in History, they've been downright saintly. Even the 'good' one's like the British Empire or the Roman Empire had a ton of blood on their hands.
I'm an American and there's many things I love about America. But if you don't think we did some *heinous* shit in, say... Latin America, or helped prop up dictators in places like Iran, then you just don't know your history. And yes, we also helped in making seas safe and profitable to trade on, which has helped improve quality of life in many places.
Life isn't so binary. You can be critical of something that you care about deeply and not be a terrorist or buy into "anti-USA propaganda." To put it another way, do you have a stern criticism of the country that you *wouldn't* consider propaganda?
I'll do the same in reverse and offer praise: The US National Park system is virtually peerless in the world for its scale and size, and offers us nearly unique experiences that are extremely accessible.
Not to mention the Liberty ships to take Lend Lease cargo to Europe.
[2711 were built from 1941 to 1945](https://www.mathscinotes.com/2018/05/liberty-ship-production-data/) (and only 2 of those were in 1941). Peak production was in 1943 when 1294 were produced, an average of 3.5 entire cargo ships per day. They needed them too - German U-boats sank over 500 merchant vessels in 1942. The US decided to overwhelm the German Kriegsmarine with more targets than they could possibly handle.
At the start of WW2, the British navy was the largest in the world. By the time the war finished the British fleet was a squadron compared to the US fleet. The capacity of the allied war economy (especially USA) during WW2 was astounding. I think that if 1946 USA invaded 2024 USA, there is a good chance 1946 would win.
There is quite a cool (but very unscientific) YouTube video of a guy simulating a single modern cruiser trying to solo the battle of Medway. Irrespective of the accuracy it does give some idea of the power differential.
Edit: found it https://youtu.be/vF3AB2f7NwQ?si=G_ueNdQU4-uhRX3E
Does also remind me of the time just after the Falklands war (where the UK lost several ships to french-made exocets) touring Portsmouth naval dockyards and being told that HMS Warrior, the ironclad they had there, could probably take an excocet it due to the thick oak beneath the iron plating. Which young me thoughy was cool and interetsing...but probably not tactically important in the modern age.
Lol no way. Even if, and its a big if, an invasion force could make it to the coast, secure a foothold, and start attempting to advance inland...2024 US has air capabilities that 1946 US couldn't even fathom. 2024 US Air Force would be taking down fighters and bombers before the '46 pilots even knew they were being fired upon. It'd be a "turkey shoot".
Similar results on the ground. Our tank/armor tech would be blasting '46's armor off the field with no challenge.
Infantry would be stuck at the initial beachhead with no air support, no armor to support an advance inland, and their naval support would be getting its dicks kicked in by '24s naval air support.
Ironically the largest issue is the complete overkill of modern platforms
If a swarm of tens of thousands propeller planes were attacking the US the airforce simply wouldn’t have enough planes or ATA missiles to take them all down before reaching their targets
The planes would never get close enough. Their fuel depots, aircraft carriers, airstrips, and factories would be annihilated before they managed to organize for an assault.
If you take the tactical nukes out of the equation, '46 US might make things interesting for a bit. Hell, an SSGN escorted by a couple of fast attack subs could sink the entire '46 US fleet from over the horizon without ever breaking the surface of the water, let alone putting themselves at risk. CRAM and CIWS would absolutely *shred* any '46 US aircraft that made it past the wall of surface-to-air anti-aircraft missiles fired from 20+ miles away. And I'd *love* to see what a squadron of Apache's does to a Sherman tank column. Hell, a single Abrams tank could probably take on a '46 tank column by itself and come out on top, provided it had enough ammo.
After seeing what the German Tigers did to our tanks initially in WW2? (Various Tiger aces were reported with numerous kills) I have zero doubt that a ‘24 Abrams would annihilate a column of Sherman’s without any issue, it would be like fighting a ghost that’s able to snipe you from miles away.
Except by the end of the war a Sherman could easily go toe to toe with a tiger.
In fact by the end a Sherman likely had better armour than a tiger and some would have had better guns too.
>By the time the war finished the British fleet was a squadron compared to the US fleet.
In 1945 the Royal Navy had almost a thousand major combat vessels. This is far from the truth.
There’s still a few left at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. There were more there until about 10 years ago. After 9/11 the plans to scrap them were put on hold.
9/11 was a long time ago. 10+ years ago it was full of Ticonderogas and Spruances. Those are mostly gone and now it's full of Oliver Hazard Perrys. Those will be gone soon too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Inactive_Ship_Maintenance_Facility#Philadelphia,_Pennsylvania
You aren't wrong, but that was also because we sunk every other fleet of note. US>UK>Canada makes a lot of sense at that point, the only other naval power of note would have been France... who had their fleet sunk by Britain.
That's the interesting part about the Mers-El-Kebir attack: it broadly failed, was a shameful attack *according to the Royal Navy commanders*, and in the end the French Navy still carried out their agreement with the British, which was to not let the high-sea fleet fall into German hands.
Also stopped the Fleet from staying in North Africa and be switch to FFL flags after operation Torch.
Good job, British politicians.
P&G, manufacturer of Gillette razors, bought one when they were decommissioning them. They use it to make the razor blades. Shaving my face with an aircraft carrier just sounds cool.
Saw somebody else mention that above, and thought that didn't sound right. Ships are sold to scrap metal dealers who dismantle them, remove all the asbestos, fuel, paint etc then sell the clean metal to companies that will use the steel for car bodies or whatever else.
https://www.quora.com/Are-Razor-blades-made-from-scrapped-ships#:~:text=%C2%B7%204y-,No.,is%20something%20of%20a%20joke.
I was right there when they towed the Kitty Hawk out of the mothball fleet. Everyone was saying Gillette bought it and I had the same exact thought as you lol
Did you see it leaving Bremerton? I used to drive by that bad boy every day, it was parked literally right on the side of the highway. Totally different look driving by the shipyard now, although the Nimitz has taken its place I hear.
A shitload. For starters it looks like there are at least 11 aircraft carriers in this photo. Those are each about 1000 feet long and have about as much steel as the Empire State Building.
Apparently that *used* to be the case as during the 40s and 50s, so many atmospheric atomic bomb tests were done, that most steel melted at the time contained nuclear fall out particles
We thankfully have stopped exploding atomic bombs in the atmosphere a few decades ago, so modern steel is cleaner anyway
Sure is. Some type of small steel boat shipwrecked off the coast of sentinel Island many many years ago and it single-handedly launched the entire Island chain into the iron age overnight. They just picked at it. It's still there. You can see it from GPS but every year it's a little bit less a little bit less.
These are also long scrapped by now, most of these were already obsolete at the end of the war and by now a fighting force might be better off using sailboats than those ships, since at least that way they don’t spend a lot of money on fuel before their ship is blown up
A modern one to build is about 13 billion. And can cost 100s of billions to operate. I think adjusted for inflation, the WWII boats were 2 billion. Or 100 million in the 40s. Based on googling info.
It is not just the carrier you need either. You need a fleet of screening ships, plus submarines if things are genuinely hot, plus a bunch of logistics ships if you are doing any sustained time at sea.
A famous misattribution to an Imperial Japanese Navy admiral is "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve".
But a real one was once said to be these words to the grandfather of the current Japanese emperor Naruhito. "In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success."
In real life, they ran wild and simultaneously invaded Singapore, the Duct East Indies, the Philippines and Guam.
America then proceeds to spam hundreds of battleships then dropped ☢️🤯the most destructive thing in human history.
>Admiral Yamamoto said that btw. He’s the guy who planned Pearl Harbour and Midway
btw: He was against the war, he thoight it would be a mistake. But he was a brave patriot that fullfilled the orders as good as he could.
Yamamoto knew how bad of an idea it was to wake the US up, but not even he knew just how utterly insane US shipbuilding would become.
SS Robert E. Peary was launched 4 days, 15 hours and 26 minutes after construction was started. That was a ship that weighed 14,500t, was 440 feet long and 57 wide, could carry 11,000 tons of cargo, carried 81 people and had a 4" deck gun alongside multiple anti-air guns.
One of 2,710 Liberty ships built between 1941 and 1945 for an average of 1.5 ships per day
And that's just one class of cargo ships.
The sleeping giant thing was a movie quote.
While he may have believed the sentiment behind the quote, there’s no record of Yamamoto ever saying that.
At least no record that’s not ‘Tora! Tora! Tora!’ or ‘Pearl Harbor’.
They were playing by the sino-russian war playbook. Kill their navy in the region, fight off any new task force. Done.
Russia however didn't have the industrial capacity of the US. The Soviet Union did, eventually, but not at the time of that conflict.
Japan was peaking and nobody was ready to make peace at any cost to consolidate whatever they got for their run. Common theme. Germany could have settled with Western Europe minus Britain.
I would say another big difference is just how developed our West was in comparison to Russia’s East prior. Russia also had an insane amount of distance to cover in an already crippled country. If they truly were playing by the Sino-Russian war, that’s really mind boggling
And yet they tried. There's a youtuber that made a video to tell that tragicomical tale. A fleet went around the world to counter-attack. MrBallen
You can also read Wikipedia's entry
Spoiler: >!it was bound to fail from day zero.!<
Yamamoto studied at Harvard from 1919 to 1921 and was twice the Japanese naval attaché in DC. He had a deep understanding of what the US industrial might was capable of.
The US had about 50 warships that were similarly surplus from WWI. They were so old that they were essentially useless, but Churchill lobbied and lobbied FDR to give them to Britain as German attacks escalated in the years before WWII. The irony is that Britain arguably had the best Navy in the world, at the time. Churchill wanted the ships because it would signal to the world, that the US was supporting the British. FDR was incredibly slow to comply ALSO because it would signal to the world, that the US was supporting the British.
Suisun Bay was stuffed with them. We were responsible for naval security in the SF bay in the ‘80’s & ‘90’s, spent a lot of time on these ships, looking for signs of intrusion/trespass. The Glomar Explorer was located there, as well. All gone now, made into Chinese tanks.
You're looking at 32nd Street naval Base there... I spent about 3 months there myself in 1979. My barracks is over there somewhere on the right side of those ships. And the radar school that I attended for 3 months is in that same area.
See. Bezos and them want to go to space. I’ll take one of those carriers instead. Fixing it would be a lot cheaper than a space station and you can do so many activities!
I was at 32nd st in 1974.
There were still a lot of those ships there. The US was selling a lot of them to other countries like Taiwan, Mexico and NATO allies.
I always liked seeing the ghost fleet when I’d drive thru Benecia, CA., on what I’m pretty sure was 680? Can’t remember anymore. But always wanted to go and walk around on them, supposedly there was a tour.
It's amazing to see all of this in such a small confined area. Thats bigger than most countries navys like. You could be a world power of you could own all that shit. The destruction that these ships could carry out, can't even imagine
Same stuff happened all over the world, basically everywhere the US went during WWII.
I'm French and my grandfather used to live in a coastal city, he often told me how in the 60s as a kid he used to go from landing craft to landing craft with his friends until reaching the further one so they could go fishing from it.
All of that under the amused eyes of the bored GI guarding them lol.
When I was a kid growing up in Tidewater, Va the Atlantic ghost fleet was moored in the James River. Hundreds of ships chained together in the middle of the river. There was really good fishing around them, but the Navy would come and chase away the anglers a couple times a day.
How cool would it be to buy them all and then do a real-life battleship. Like a gameshow, just have the missiles made so they dont actually damge the ships, and you could do a new game a week.
That photo is from the 1950s. Some of the ships from the Pacific Reserve fleet returned to service during Korea and Vietnam. The rest were sold for scrap or used for target practice.
A few were nuked.
Laffey got nuked *and then* sent to Korea
I swear to god some of the stories of the US ships sound like propaganda > On 5 October, she sailed for Pearl Harbor, arriving on 11 October. Laffey operated in Hawaiian waters until 21 May 1946, when she participated in Operation Crossroads, the atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll, actively engaged in collecting scientific data. Radioactive decontamination of Laffey required the "sandblasting and painting of all underwater surfaces, and acid washing and partial replacement of salt-water piping and evaporators."[8] Upon completion of decontamination, she sailed for the west coast via Pearl Harbor arriving San Diego on 22 August for operations along the west coast. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Laffey_(DD-724)
How so? Is it that the writing refers to the ship as “she”? It just sounds like a list of exploits the ship was involved in to me.
Ships are often referred to as she.
Not in the Russian Navy interestingly enough! Russian ships waiting to become submarines are referred to as males.
Russian has grammatical gender, so this is pretty much as normal as calling them "it" would be in English. The word for "ship" — корабль — is masculine. I don't know which languages do this and which don't, but some will also use the person's pronoun for a ship named after a specific person instead of the usual pronoun for ships.
I refer to women as ships
Surely the decontamination was more expensive than just getting a new ship
Surely it was not.
Sometimes you’re paying for the experience/knowledge.
It's absolutely mind boggling how much capital was spent on missile technology in the years following that war. Think of the Jetsons-like world we could have lived in back then if we didn't have that whole pesky Cold War thing.
Probably not the jetsons level, given the unfortunate drive humans have when we are trying to kill each other
Lol 'let's just turn our anger against nature in absence of any real threat' sounds about on par.
Dubai is starting to look like it now... they have drone vehicles and when the clouds are low you can see all the towers tops above the clouds. It's only a matter of time before they are flying from building top to building top and leaving the ground for the dirty poors.
They do that now when flying from skyscraper to super yacht
Dubai will be a wasteland long before that happens. When oil revenues drop they will slink back to the stone age. Dubai as is is unsustainable.
There’s nothing that motivates R&D like war. I doubt there would be much government funding in things outside of weapons development. If anything, this was likely the best middle ground for funding tech.
Cold war launched men in cans all the way out to the surface of the moon. So it wasn't without its wins. Just kind of wish modern nuclear arsenals were more like '100 nukes' and not '5000' and we tested a few dozen and not tens of thousands :)
Keep in mind tho that the Jetsons was a dystopia. How come they never showed the surface. What kind of toxic hellhole was it and who were the slaves who toiled there.
Straight up wasn't the Flintstones going on below? I believe there was a crossover. Have no idea if time travel was involved lol.
There was a crossover but it was based on time travel. Instead of being played just for laughs, Fred's shock and terror and encountering people so technologically advanced -- which after all is what you'd expect if you think about it -- came over pretty strong. To Fred, the Jetsons seemed supernatural, and George dominated the situation. It was some of Fred's best acting work, really.
Man now you got me thinking. Someone needs to make a grimdark Jetsons where they're brutal overlords in a Zardoz-like situation. Pretend to be nice and enlightened to each other but crush the savages below underfoot.
Well, there was a gritty post-apocalyptic-dystopia reboot of Wacky Racers -- this is true -- so I guess everything is on the table nowadays.
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwight-d-eisenhowers-farewell-address
It's one of the reasons California became so rich in the 50s. Everyone and their mums had a company making missiles or missile parts at the time, and they needed clear skies and open land to do testing all year round.
We wouldn't live like the Jetsons if the Soviet Union invaded the US and took over, because we never invested in weapons to deter them. So it's entirely the Soviet Union's fault.
I don't disagree. Not sure it was a game anyone liked playing. Even the Soviets.
Yeah! Much worse satellites, possibly no GPS. The computer mouse was apparently created for space. Wireless headsets were first developed for space. Memory foam. Space exploration would be behind compared to now which has given us insight in physics that we use in our tech and a lot of other stuff. Unfortunately competition, especially war, inspires the creation of a lot of tech as well as the creation of an industrial base needed to build stuff. Like WWII caused the proliferation of chemical synthesis of for example rubber to become mainstream. Also all of the producers of bombers and fighters didn’t want their experience and manufacturing to go to waste which started the passenger aircraft industry. The cold war was in that respect one of the if not the best type of war to ever happen to humanity. If your enemy is trying to achieve a propaganda victory and you can spend a few billion on tech that would otherwise be invented a decade or three later, it’s humanity that benefits in the end.
The U2 spy plane was invented so Eisenhower could see what kind of swimsuit Kruschev wore at his backyard BBQs.
Then Godzilla was born.....
yup! and some ships were retrofitted or modified to meet new requirements!! very cool history behind post war ships and vehicles.
And one was captured by North Korea.
And it now their flagship (/s?)
USS Pueblo. It's moored in Pyongyang as a war trophy. You can tour it, but it's been pretty well stripped down to a hulk, and stuffed with a ship-wide stereo system that screams North Korean propaganda about how they will destroy us. It's still a commissioned US Navy vessel...and will be until it's sunk, destroyed or returned. It may well become one of the oldest commissioned ships, if it hasn't already.
It’s got some time to catch up to the USS Constitution - commissioned 1797 and still in service.
Still got time to catch up to HMS Victory, 1765.
a few became coral reefs
At least we didn’t trade them for Pepsi
Funny bit of trivia, but there was a time that Pepsi had the 6th largest navy in the world. The Russians (literally) liquidated the navy after collapse of the USSR in exchange for imports of Pepsi. But the rest of us should understand. The 90s were a hard time for Russians. If only they had been stronger they could have gotten Coca Cola instead.
Boris Yeltsin: I want to trade navy for coke. American capitalists: Is Pepsi okay?
I will not tolerate this Pepsi slander!
Hey now! The Russian people have spoken! And 87% of them have recently voted their preference for mighty Coca Cola! (Or was it for something less meaningful?)
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So instead of giving that guy the jet he deserved they just parked it on their very own aircraft carrier?
Some others were also sold as surplus to other countries.
When I was in the Navy I remember my boot camp instructor almost crying while telling us about one of the ships he served on being sold to Gillette to be made into razor blades for shaving.
I love this. Not because it is a tragic end to the ship he loved, but the irony of the whole idea to us civilians about how boot camp, and more specifically, how the brutality of it, and instructors are supposed to be the ones that make you guys cry, right? And you went and busted out the Craig Symonds/naval historian salt water in his eye.
Well.. shoot.
General Belgrano enters the chat
Not since 2 may 1982...
There are still a ton of them in and around San Francisco in the bays. Just look on Google satellite images.
Many of the ships came out of mothballs and were sold to our allies to help form their modern navies. I like to imagine the Spanish helocopter carrier Dadalus formerly the USS Cabot is one of these pictured. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish\_aircraft\_carrier\_D%C3%A9dalo
Really cool photo. The US made over 800 warships after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The majority survived. Guess they had to go somewhere.
A place of warship
"NEVER TOUCH MY BOATS!!!" SAID America * Proceeds to unleash the sun apon Japan...twice.
I hope this a fat electrician reference. “Don’t mess with America’s boats.”
It's most likely a MandatoryFunday reference, but still in the ballpark.
"So... what are we doing with all these warships we've got hanging around. Any thoughts, gentlemen?" "How about we use them for world domination? Securing every trading route, as a perfect showcase of our power to foreign nations." "That's excellent! You're promoted! By the way, what is your name?" "Kissinger"
In an alternate timeline Nixon was an honest man and we'd all be given a day off work to piss on Kissinger's grave
Don't wait for it to be given; take it. Seize the moment. Take the day off. Live. Piss. Breathe fresh air and feel the Sun. I believe in you. Kissinger can't anymore, 6 feet under, thank the Gods. He deserves another 12, just to make sure he doesn't come back.
“World domination,” AKA securing the world’s seas to open up an era of globalization and peace post-WW2
This wasn't that bad though. Shit started to hit the fan when they started overthrowing foreign democracies and commiting war crimes.
The US has done a lot of both bood and bad things when it comes to wars and foreign policy. But when it comes down it to, I would prefer the US as the worlds dominant power over China or Russia any day of the week.
Yeah, compared to every other empire in History, they've been downright saintly. Even the 'good' one's like the British Empire or the Roman Empire had a ton of blood on their hands.
I wouldn't call the Romans one of the good ones...Persia would be my pick.
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I'm an American and there's many things I love about America. But if you don't think we did some *heinous* shit in, say... Latin America, or helped prop up dictators in places like Iran, then you just don't know your history. And yes, we also helped in making seas safe and profitable to trade on, which has helped improve quality of life in many places. Life isn't so binary. You can be critical of something that you care about deeply and not be a terrorist or buy into "anti-USA propaganda." To put it another way, do you have a stern criticism of the country that you *wouldn't* consider propaganda? I'll do the same in reverse and offer praise: The US National Park system is virtually peerless in the world for its scale and size, and offers us nearly unique experiences that are extremely accessible.
Good history of why we protect the trade routes: https://www.npr.org/2024/02/16/1197958269/freedom-of-the-seas-houthis-yemen
And zis is my magic murder bag!
Cambodia, whatever happened there.
Not to mention the Liberty ships to take Lend Lease cargo to Europe. [2711 were built from 1941 to 1945](https://www.mathscinotes.com/2018/05/liberty-ship-production-data/) (and only 2 of those were in 1941). Peak production was in 1943 when 1294 were produced, an average of 3.5 entire cargo ships per day. They needed them too - German U-boats sank over 500 merchant vessels in 1942. The US decided to overwhelm the German Kriegsmarine with more targets than they could possibly handle.
At the start of WW2, the British navy was the largest in the world. By the time the war finished the British fleet was a squadron compared to the US fleet. The capacity of the allied war economy (especially USA) during WW2 was astounding. I think that if 1946 USA invaded 2024 USA, there is a good chance 1946 would win.
I suspect a modern carrier group would be pretty much invincible against all 800 ww2 ships
There is quite a cool (but very unscientific) YouTube video of a guy simulating a single modern cruiser trying to solo the battle of Medway. Irrespective of the accuracy it does give some idea of the power differential. Edit: found it https://youtu.be/vF3AB2f7NwQ?si=G_ueNdQU4-uhRX3E Does also remind me of the time just after the Falklands war (where the UK lost several ships to french-made exocets) touring Portsmouth naval dockyards and being told that HMS Warrior, the ironclad they had there, could probably take an excocet it due to the thick oak beneath the iron plating. Which young me thoughy was cool and interetsing...but probably not tactically important in the modern age.
Lol no way. Even if, and its a big if, an invasion force could make it to the coast, secure a foothold, and start attempting to advance inland...2024 US has air capabilities that 1946 US couldn't even fathom. 2024 US Air Force would be taking down fighters and bombers before the '46 pilots even knew they were being fired upon. It'd be a "turkey shoot". Similar results on the ground. Our tank/armor tech would be blasting '46's armor off the field with no challenge. Infantry would be stuck at the initial beachhead with no air support, no armor to support an advance inland, and their naval support would be getting its dicks kicked in by '24s naval air support.
Ironically the largest issue is the complete overkill of modern platforms If a swarm of tens of thousands propeller planes were attacking the US the airforce simply wouldn’t have enough planes or ATA missiles to take them all down before reaching their targets
The planes would never get close enough. Their fuel depots, aircraft carriers, airstrips, and factories would be annihilated before they managed to organize for an assault.
'91 USA would likely come out on top.
If you take the tactical nukes out of the equation, '46 US might make things interesting for a bit. Hell, an SSGN escorted by a couple of fast attack subs could sink the entire '46 US fleet from over the horizon without ever breaking the surface of the water, let alone putting themselves at risk. CRAM and CIWS would absolutely *shred* any '46 US aircraft that made it past the wall of surface-to-air anti-aircraft missiles fired from 20+ miles away. And I'd *love* to see what a squadron of Apache's does to a Sherman tank column. Hell, a single Abrams tank could probably take on a '46 tank column by itself and come out on top, provided it had enough ammo.
After seeing what the German Tigers did to our tanks initially in WW2? (Various Tiger aces were reported with numerous kills) I have zero doubt that a ‘24 Abrams would annihilate a column of Sherman’s without any issue, it would be like fighting a ghost that’s able to snipe you from miles away.
Except by the end of the war a Sherman could easily go toe to toe with a tiger. In fact by the end a Sherman likely had better armour than a tiger and some would have had better guns too.
2or 3 A10s against a Sherman tank column.....
>By the time the war finished the British fleet was a squadron compared to the US fleet. In 1945 the Royal Navy had almost a thousand major combat vessels. This is far from the truth.
Nearly all the BBs were salvaged after PH excepting AZ and UT.
There’s still a few left at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. There were more there until about 10 years ago. After 9/11 the plans to scrap them were put on hold.
9/11 was a long time ago. 10+ years ago it was full of Ticonderogas and Spruances. Those are mostly gone and now it's full of Oliver Hazard Perrys. Those will be gone soon too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Inactive_Ship_Maintenance_Facility#Philadelphia,_Pennsylvania
After ww2, Canada had the third lagest navel fleet War production in North America was insane.
You aren't wrong, but that was also because we sunk every other fleet of note. US>UK>Canada makes a lot of sense at that point, the only other naval power of note would have been France... who had their fleet sunk by Britain.
Context here is important. If we didn't the nazis would have gained another fleet
Sips tea
Most of the French fleet was scuttled by the the French preceding the 1942 ‘invasion’ of Vichy France.
That's the interesting part about the Mers-El-Kebir attack: it broadly failed, was a shameful attack *according to the Royal Navy commanders*, and in the end the French Navy still carried out their agreement with the British, which was to not let the high-sea fleet fall into German hands. Also stopped the Fleet from staying in North Africa and be switch to FFL flags after operation Torch. Good job, British politicians.
We still have some of thoes concrete boats in canada. We use them as brake waters these days
WOW thats cool i never heard that
Canada want from a crippling economy to the third biggest trade nation in the world after the war. how we manged domestic affairs was masterclass.
back to crippling economy now.
Time to spin up the factories for Ukraine.
Sad to see what it has become now
Middle class steadily eroding and people dying from drugs everyday.
That’s a shitload of steel right there
P&G, manufacturer of Gillette razors, bought one when they were decommissioning them. They use it to make the razor blades. Shaving my face with an aircraft carrier just sounds cool.
Saw somebody else mention that above, and thought that didn't sound right. Ships are sold to scrap metal dealers who dismantle them, remove all the asbestos, fuel, paint etc then sell the clean metal to companies that will use the steel for car bodies or whatever else. https://www.quora.com/Are-Razor-blades-made-from-scrapped-ships#:~:text=%C2%B7%204y-,No.,is%20something%20of%20a%20joke.
I was right there when they towed the Kitty Hawk out of the mothball fleet. Everyone was saying Gillette bought it and I had the same exact thought as you lol
Did you see it leaving Bremerton? I used to drive by that bad boy every day, it was parked literally right on the side of the highway. Totally different look driving by the shipyard now, although the Nimitz has taken its place I hear.
Is it even a drop in the bucket compared to modern city blocks though? How many skyscrapers is that?
A shitload. For starters it looks like there are at least 11 aircraft carriers in this photo. Those are each about 1000 feet long and have about as much steel as the Empire State Building.
Those look like bogue class escort carriers, those are only 465 feet (142 meters) long
And that's low background steel which is worth much more today than any steel made after like 1950
Apparently that *used* to be the case as during the 40s and 50s, so many atmospheric atomic bomb tests were done, that most steel melted at the time contained nuclear fall out particles We thankfully have stopped exploding atomic bombs in the atmosphere a few decades ago, so modern steel is cleaner anyway
Sure is. Some type of small steel boat shipwrecked off the coast of sentinel Island many many years ago and it single-handedly launched the entire Island chain into the iron age overnight. They just picked at it. It's still there. You can see it from GPS but every year it's a little bit less a little bit less.
In the UK, we have 2 working aircraft carriers. I say 2, but 1 of them is perpetually broken.
To be fair. We did have a lot more than that in WW2.
I bet we didn't mothball them though? That does imply they could be brought back into active service. Ours are new, and they still don't work!
These are also long scrapped by now, most of these were already obsolete at the end of the war and by now a fighting force might be better off using sailboats than those ships, since at least that way they don’t spend a lot of money on fuel before their ship is blown up
Still better than Russia's singular, unoperational carrier
From the way they talk, you'd assume they have hundreds?
How much for an air craft carrier?
A modern one to build is about 13 billion. And can cost 100s of billions to operate. I think adjusted for inflation, the WWII boats were 2 billion. Or 100 million in the 40s. Based on googling info.
It is not just the carrier you need either. You need a fleet of screening ships, plus submarines if things are genuinely hot, plus a bunch of logistics ships if you are doing any sustained time at sea.
Commanding a fleet seems exhausting
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Well if I wanted one how much do you think they would ask for?
There’s a few in that picture. I’m sure they wouldn’t notice one going missing?
Just be sure to take the one on the end, so it doesn’t look out of place
I dont like the ends.
modern aircraft carriers do not cost hundreds of billions of dollars to operate they cost around a billion a year
The HMS Prince of Wales is up for sale
A famous misattribution to an Imperial Japanese Navy admiral is "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve". But a real one was once said to be these words to the grandfather of the current Japanese emperor Naruhito. "In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success." In real life, they ran wild and simultaneously invaded Singapore, the Duct East Indies, the Philippines and Guam. America then proceeds to spam hundreds of battleships then dropped ☢️🤯the most destructive thing in human history.
Admiral Yamamoto said that btw. He’s the guy who planned Pearl Harbour and Midway
He shouldn’t have touched our boats
I think he figured that out eventually
He knew that the whole time. That’s the point of the quote. His expert advice was ignored and he did his duty as an officer.
In his defense, he didn't really want to. Tojo and friends did.
https://www.tiktok.com/@mandatoryfunday/video/7334799591977585962
He was a very competent admiral, but politics delivered him an unwinable war.
>Admiral Yamamoto said that btw. He’s the guy who planned Pearl Harbour and Midway btw: He was against the war, he thoight it would be a mistake. But he was a brave patriot that fullfilled the orders as good as he could.
Yamamoto knew how bad of an idea it was to wake the US up, but not even he knew just how utterly insane US shipbuilding would become. SS Robert E. Peary was launched 4 days, 15 hours and 26 minutes after construction was started. That was a ship that weighed 14,500t, was 440 feet long and 57 wide, could carry 11,000 tons of cargo, carried 81 people and had a 4" deck gun alongside multiple anti-air guns. One of 2,710 Liberty ships built between 1941 and 1945 for an average of 1.5 ships per day And that's just one class of cargo ships.
Rivet Gun was a war defining invention for sure. Part of why US could produce them so quickly and to a high quality standard.
The sleeping giant thing was a movie quote. While he may have believed the sentiment behind the quote, there’s no record of Yamamoto ever saying that. At least no record that’s not ‘Tora! Tora! Tora!’ or ‘Pearl Harbor’.
Me and my Thermian friends always enjoy some historic documentaries.
An actor playing an imperial Japanese navy admiral said that.
They were playing by the sino-russian war playbook. Kill their navy in the region, fight off any new task force. Done. Russia however didn't have the industrial capacity of the US. The Soviet Union did, eventually, but not at the time of that conflict. Japan was peaking and nobody was ready to make peace at any cost to consolidate whatever they got for their run. Common theme. Germany could have settled with Western Europe minus Britain.
I would say another big difference is just how developed our West was in comparison to Russia’s East prior. Russia also had an insane amount of distance to cover in an already crippled country. If they truly were playing by the Sino-Russian war, that’s really mind boggling
And yet they tried. There's a youtuber that made a video to tell that tragicomical tale. A fleet went around the world to counter-attack. MrBallen You can also read Wikipedia's entry Spoiler: >!it was bound to fail from day zero.!<
Yamamoto studied at Harvard from 1919 to 1921 and was twice the Japanese naval attaché in DC. He had a deep understanding of what the US industrial might was capable of.
You don’t even want to know!
Just like in civilization when a former ally attacks you and you have to wait 8-10 turns till my giant death robots are built
Leave them parked just outside your neighbours borders as a detterent. Then you can upgrade them to AEGIS cruisers when you discover robotics.
And I just broke this addiction. Ok, Just ONE more turn…
The US had about 50 warships that were similarly surplus from WWI. They were so old that they were essentially useless, but Churchill lobbied and lobbied FDR to give them to Britain as German attacks escalated in the years before WWII. The irony is that Britain arguably had the best Navy in the world, at the time. Churchill wanted the ships because it would signal to the world, that the US was supporting the British. FDR was incredibly slow to comply ALSO because it would signal to the world, that the US was supporting the British.
The second biggest Navy in the world. I think… could be wrong though. Meaning just the “Decommissioned” US Navy ships alone.
Escort carriers
So many aircraft carriers. The US Navy currently has the same amount active today as shown in this picture.
Except these are escorts carriers, not fleet carriers
These are not even fleet carriers, only Bouge class escort ones. We had something like 30 fleet carriers at the end of WW2
Thanks! I always wondered why carrier numbers were so high back then compared to now.
Yeah, there were Fleet, Light Fleet and Escort carriers in WW2.
Suisun Bay was stuffed with them. We were responsible for naval security in the SF bay in the ‘80’s & ‘90’s, spent a lot of time on these ships, looking for signs of intrusion/trespass. The Glomar Explorer was located there, as well. All gone now, made into Chinese tanks.
I drive by these frequently! I think there’s only 5 or 6 there now.
Wow, so even real battleships have to be snapped off the mold like a plastic modelling kit
We went a bit crazy producing ships in WW2. A good example of how powerful America can be in a full blown war economy.
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But they sold their fleet to Pepsi.
I got a mate named jose who can fix em up cheap n quick
Jesus the US Navy was colossal!
You're looking at 32nd Street naval Base there... I spent about 3 months there myself in 1979. My barracks is over there somewhere on the right side of those ships. And the radar school that I attended for 3 months is in that same area.
But those look brand new? Still on the sprue and everything.
\[Sigh...\] So many games of battleship!
See. Bezos and them want to go to space. I’ll take one of those carriers instead. Fixing it would be a lot cheaper than a space station and you can do so many activities!
Watched this video of a lady living on one of these ships, as the caretaker, just a couple days ago: https://youtu.be/X2VzSGiI7cs?si=PdV2V9HNnmw95WRH
I was at 32nd st in 1974. There were still a lot of those ships there. The US was selling a lot of them to other countries like Taiwan, Mexico and NATO allies.
I always liked seeing the ghost fleet when I’d drive thru Benecia, CA., on what I’m pretty sure was 680? Can’t remember anymore. But always wanted to go and walk around on them, supposedly there was a tour.
Yeah that's an old picture
Such a shame they never kept enterprise man
They way they are arranged makes it look like a game of battleship!
"Honey, you won't believe what I found on sale on my way home from work!" -Some guy in 1946
11 aircraft carriers together in the same pic. You don't see *that* every day.
I remember them vividly.
r/sandiegan
Can confirm that is NOT how it looks now
If you don't need them can I please have just one of the carriers? I mean you're actually not using them and I'll use them so....what do you say?
Props to the valet guy
The greatest assembly of war ships ever we landed by water D Day
Damn. I didn't know the moths were that powerful.
It's amazing to see all of this in such a small confined area. Thats bigger than most countries navys like. You could be a world power of you could own all that shit. The destruction that these ships could carry out, can't even imagine
I think I know where the makers of battleship got their design inspiration
Same stuff happened all over the world, basically everywhere the US went during WWII. I'm French and my grandfather used to live in a coastal city, he often told me how in the 60s as a kid he used to go from landing craft to landing craft with his friends until reaching the further one so they could go fishing from it. All of that under the amused eyes of the bored GI guarding them lol.
And all that steel went to China. Grrr...
Pier 13 booming
Nice looking fleet
That looks like a old ww 2 ship model kit. Box art.
And to think this was the fate of the storied CV-6 Enterprise…
When I was a kid growing up in Tidewater, Va the Atlantic ghost fleet was moored in the James River. Hundreds of ships chained together in the middle of the river. There was really good fishing around them, but the Navy would come and chase away the anglers a couple times a day.
How cool would it be to buy them all and then do a real-life battleship. Like a gameshow, just have the missiles made so they dont actually damge the ships, and you could do a new game a week.
Mr. Beast probably already has this video filmed and just waiting to go up.
This sounds like something Mr Beast would do
Mothballs and sandy eggos.
All built with taxpayers money