USS Helena and Captain Hoover.

[The Basket]

Grinds my gears.

13th November 1942

USS Juneau is torpedoed by a IJN sub and magazine explodes. This is a famous story mainly due to the deaths of the Sullivan brothers.

Captain of the Helena does not rescue due to sub in area and believe that there can be no survivors from such a massive blast.

He gets a black mark on his name from Admiral Halsey for not attempting any rescue. So that's and future promotion out the window.

This is the same Halsey of Taffy 3 and sailing into a Typhoon. So you make a military decision based on facts and get done in. You kill men directly because of bad orders and it don't mean a thing.

I call this the Beatty doctrine of military command. The more connected and higher rank you are...the more of your own men you can kill and not have to suffer the consequences.

 

[Capt. Vick]

Oh I assure you this is not just a military condition, it works with the application of law it seems.

 

[Glider]

I hate saying this but it was a close call and I don't blame him as much as some. Clearly there was a submarine in the area and he was escorting another badly damaged ship. Had he tried a rescue and was damaged let alone sunk, the Japanese had the San Francisco as a defenceless sitting duck as she had taken a pounding in the battle and would have been unable to fight back.

In the same situation I would be surprised if an RN vessel stopped. If then had been on their own then they might, but not with the responsibility of a third ship.

 

[SaparotRob]

I am reminded of a situation that happened to 3 RN capital ships during World War One. A cruiser (?) was torpedoed. The second cruiser stopped for survivors and was torpedoed as well as the third in the same way. That would have occurred to me.

 

[The Basket]

U-9. They weren't cruisers. They were 3 death trap pieces of junk.

When HMS Audacious was sunk a few weeks later, it was standing orders for the battleships to get out of Dodge sharpish leaving smaller vessels to rescue. It was believed that Audacious was hit by a sub fired torpedo.

The sinking of the Juneau gained public notice due to the 5 Sullivan brothers dying and I would wager they needed a sacrifice to take the blame and so Hoover was chosen. Harsh and not fair.

 

[SaparotRob]

U-9. They weren't cruisers. They were 3 death trap pieces of junk.

When HMS Audacious was sunk a few weeks later, it was standing orders for the battleships to get out of Dodge sharpish leaving smaller vessels to rescue. It was believed that Audacious was hit by a sub fired torpedo.

The sinking of the Juneau gained public notice due to the 5 Sullivan brothers dying and I would wager they needed a sacrifice to take the blame and so Hoover was chosen. Harsh and not fair.

Was one of the ships named HMS Aboukir? Were those ships protected cruisers or pre-dreadnaught battleships?

 

[SaparotRob]

I could look it up but it's more fun this way!

 

[The Basket]

Cressey, Hogue and Aboukir.

Armoured Cruisers.

Older than Good Hope and Monmouth that got sunk at Coronel.

Even older than Black Prince and Defence that turned to fragments at Jutland.

So not much to say. Odd that if you look hard enough plenty of stuff goes on without a flicker. Battle of the Coronel was another total balls up that cost men their lives.

Rear Admiral Sir Christopher Craddock gets a watery grave and Churchill becomes Prime Minister.

Encourager les autres.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

'Tis a sad fact of military life: schiff most often runs downhill.

 

[Conslaw]

It's been a while since I read Hornfischer's "Neptune's Inferno" which goes over this in detail. IIRC Hornfischer goes through some options that Hoover could have done short of stopping his crippled cruisers. (It was a library book, so I don't have it now to look up.)