Yamato's Final Voyage By Lexi Krock Posted 12.01.09 NOVA Near the end of WWII, on April 7, 1945, the pride of Japan's navy, the battleship Yamato, succumbed to American airpower. Cataclysmic explosions tore the ship in half and sent her to the seafloor with most of her crew of about 3,000. Only a handful of photos from Yamato's final hours—many taken from attacking aircraft—have survived. Here, see the dramatic archival images.
My favourite fiasco, is when even a few millimetres of snow falls in the UK, and the Media, along with half the populace, appear to go into batshit mental snowmageddon mode. Often hilarious. I like snow. WW2/Military History ones much harder to think of. Hmmm. Possibly 'The Old Gang' & their armoured creations, but that may have been as much a cunning distraction of troublemakers as a real fiasco,
My favorite fiasco was a Middle Eastern girl I knew a few years ago. Come to think of it, she wasn't the fiasco, I was...
To be more serious, I find Singapore fascinating. It was a TOTAL failure, from cabinet level right down to the battalions. It's hard to think of similar examples on the Allied side that illustrate such a complete systemic breakdown, but it's also hard to find so many parallel examples of individual incompetence in one campaign. It's as if everyone had been taking stupid pills.
Just in case anyone Is wondering - Dunkirk was not a fiasco, it was a organised (ish) withdrawal back to the UK.
That's one way to put it. Shortly after the evacuation ended, Gunner Spike Milligan met a BEF bloke in a pub and asked him what Dunkirk was like. "Like, son? It was a fuckup, a highly successful fuckup."
"We are advancing in good order through well-scouted terrain toward previously prepared positions in order to better defeat an enemy who is advancing in utter disorder."
Naw, Dunkirk was not a fiasco. Now, the events leading up to it are ripe for discussion. My favorite fiasco? That naval battle east of the Philippines where a Japanese admiral allowed his fleet of battleships, heavy cruisers and assorted escorts to be defeated by a handful of US destroyers, destroyer escorts, jeep carriers and naval aircraft armed for air-ground warfare. My hat is off to Admiral Clifton "Ziggy" Sprague and the men of TF 77.4.3 (Taffy 3), who handed Admiral Takeo Kurtia his butt.
I'm Army through and through, but The Battle of Barking Creek http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Barking_Creek has always stunned me. That and taking the wrong crystals for the radios to Arnhem (awaits brickbats).
If radio crystal (mis)handling is allowed in this thread, then the inability to communicate between the RAF and the KNIL land forces during the invasion of Java, must rate as a thoroughly fubarized situation; Phillips technicians were still trying to connect quartz A with radio set B when Tojo's lot overran the Bandoeng Plateau, effectively ending the campaign. Hurricanes were the only planes in Western and Central Java (where the main action took place) capable of handling the Oscars on sort-of-even terms, be it because of numbers or capabilities; Buffaloes and Demons put up a gallant fight, specially the latter type, but were heavily out-everything. The east was P-40 territory, but AAF brass was already thinking evacuation when the landings took place.
My Fiasco was in Hong Kong every Wednesday it was sports,sports and more sports, so "F" troop Thats what we called ourselves (Regt Signals detachment to Z Coy) decided to hold away sports in the local pub. We got away with it for 9 months.
I will respectfully nominate the brave souls of the RCNVR who put to sea, in the early years of the war, in ships that were older than any of them( USN lend lease triple stackers of WW one vintage )" and with only a hand full of men who had EVER been to sea before. That takes guts, and to keep on doing it, trip after trip, is sheer craziness, but they did it. The word of the day was "on the job training " and that applied to all hands, officers and ratings, alike. Eventually, the RCN became a well trained and motivated naval force, with real experts in anti sub attack techniques. The introduction of hedgehog and spigot anti sub mortars greatly increased their ability to maintain contact, while delivering a accurate blanket of rounds, on target. A much better weapons system than the old fashioned depth charges that were simply rolled off the stern, as the ship crossed over the sub's position. Jim B Toronto.
