Quote:
Russ2146 wrote:
For the record, the jeeps were not "borrowed", they were standard equipment.
That is according to the "official" records, October 1943.
I have seen personal photo's in the USS ESSEX Association memoribalia room, of jeeps being used on the ESSEX, the first new carrier to go to the pacific, taken in Early June, of jury rigged jeeps being used on the flight deck to help spot planes. I have heard the story first hand, from WWII flight deck officers. They had learned during the flight training with air group 9, the difficulty of moving these planes manualy. When the opportunity struck, a jeep was "appropriated" from the pier and jury rigged to pull planes. When the word got around and fleet officers saw how this helped, requests went out for vehicles for othe carriers as well. I have also not seen pictures of any carriers prior to Dec of 1942 with deck vehicles aboard, nor of ESSEX with them prior to June of 1943.
Also, the ESSEX Air Officer's used the angled flight line early on, even though the angled flight deck wouldn't be built for several years. It was actually an angled take off line. Flight dispatcher Officer Russel Volkema was the man that started doing this. The purpose was to allow the slip stream from the previous plane to disapate faster, allowing shorter wait times between launches. The Essex was able to launch and recover planes faster than other carriers until later in the war when a fleet officer, (actually Admiral John McCain - commander of task group 38). [Life and Death Aboard the USS ESSEX by Richard Sreb] came aboard to observe the methods used. Our officers attributed the eary success to the ability to respot planes faster, among other things.
I guess if you want to credit only the "official" written naval documents as being 100% true, you can, but I prefer to believe what I hear right from the horses mouth - the plank owners and other veterans that actually did the deeds. I was fortunate to have met with Mr. Streb here in Grand Rapids, to hear first hand about some of this stuff. This was a period of experimentation because all this stuff was still new, most of which had no training manuals or written instructions. A lot of what actually happened is disappearing forever, as the WWII generation is passing away very quickly now, taking this information with it. I know that lots of stuff happened on ESSEX in the 60's when I was aboard that will never hit the record books either.
EJ
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