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They've found the Lexington. quote:We've located the USS Lexington after she sank 76 yrs ago. #RVPetrel found the WWII aircraft carrier & planes more than 3000m (~2mi) below Coral Sea near Australia. We remember her brave crew who helped secure 1st strategic US win in the Pacific Theater vlcn.fyi/Vcee30iLuOo
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# ? Mar 6, 2018 00:35 |
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# ? Jun 8, 2024 07:42 |
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V for Vegas posted:They've found the Lexington.
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# ? Mar 6, 2018 00:54 |
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Pretty good condition really.
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# ? Mar 6, 2018 01:10 |
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Looks as good as one of the fresh planes Grey's AI opponent delivered to Cthulhu
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# ? Mar 6, 2018 01:14 |
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The Felix the cat logo is cool as hell. Also four kills
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# ? Mar 6, 2018 01:17 |
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Considering where it is, this is close to mint condition.
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# ? Mar 6, 2018 01:28 |
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Jesenjin posted:Considering where it is, this is close to mint condition. There's a TBD in the video that's probably in better condition than any other Devestator on the planet earth. This is an incredible find.
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# ? Mar 6, 2018 01:54 |
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amazingly wrong thread. That's a great find. Wonder what the ship itself looks like. Woodchip fucked around with this message at 02:01 on Mar 6, 2018 |
# ? Mar 6, 2018 01:57 |
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Amazing how the paint on the kill flags are still so vibrant. It's like they were painted yesterday. Also, looks like the pilot managed to get out
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# ? Mar 6, 2018 02:11 |
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sparkmaster posted:Amazing how the paint on the kill flags are still so vibrant. It's like they were painted yesterday. Ship was scuttled so I hope so, I assume they fell off deck right? Or am I completely wrong.
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# ? Mar 6, 2018 02:17 |
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The markings still look so good that I wouldnt be surprised if a survivor could identify who flew that specific plane. Shame they didnt have images like this 30 or 40 years ago for more of the veterans to see.
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# ? Mar 6, 2018 02:17 |
algebra testes posted:Ship was scuttled so I hope so, I assume they fell off deck right? Or am I completely wrong. Presumably fell or pushed off the flight deck, yeah. It wouldn't look nearly that nice if it had been ditched into the ocean from flight, I don't think.
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# ? Mar 6, 2018 02:22 |
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Lakedaimon posted:The markings still look so good that I wouldnt be surprised if a survivor could identify who flew that specific plane. Shame they didnt have images like this 30 or 40 years ago for more of the veterans to see. easy enough to figure out, someone load up Coral Sea in WITP and see who has 4 kills in VF-3. edit: thought Lex was VF-2 but that would make too much sense, it's VF-3. BUG JUG fucked around with this message at 02:34 on Mar 6, 2018 |
# ? Mar 6, 2018 02:26 |
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That's stunning. Given that they're 2 miles down, what are the odds of recovering anything? Or since it was scuttled after battle is it considered a burial site and thus going to be left entirely alone?
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# ? Mar 6, 2018 02:32 |
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BUG JUG posted:easy enough to figure out, someone load up Coral Sea in WITP and see who has 4 kills in VF-2. Honestly, given grog games that could actually work.
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# ? Mar 6, 2018 02:33 |
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here they all are: The pilots of the U.S. Navy Fighting Squadron 3 (VF-3) in front of a Grumman F4F-3 Wildcat fighter, 5 March 1942. Standing (l-r): Newton H. Mason, Howard F. Clark, Edward R. Sellstrom, Willard E. Eder, Howard L. Johnson, John H. Lackey, Leon W. Haynes, Onia B. Stanley, Jr., Dale W. Peterson, Marion W. Dufilh, Rolla S. Lemmon. Sitting (l-r): Robert J. Morgan, Albert O. Vorse, Jr., Donald A. Lovelace, John S. "Jimmy" Thach, Noel A.M. Gayler, Edward H. "Butch" O'Hare, Richard M. Rowell.
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# ? Mar 6, 2018 02:40 |
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No way they recover anything. It's possible to recover stuff from that deep (one group actually pulled up a big section of the Titanic's hull a while back, and of course there's Project Azorian), but legally the Lexington is still the property of the US Navy and is considered a war grave.
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# ? Mar 6, 2018 02:42 |
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sparkmaster posted:Amazing how the paint on the kill flags are still so vibrant. It's like they were painted yesterday. Even if not, a respectable k:d.
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# ? Mar 6, 2018 02:43 |
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Lakedaimon posted:The markings still look so good that I wouldnt be surprised if a survivor could identify who flew that specific plane. As I understand it, navy pilots didn't have their own plane, they flew whichever was up in the rotation (anything else would require too much deck shuffling). So those are probably the combined kills attributed to that plane rather than any one pilot. Someone could still probably identify and dig up combat mission specifics for that airframe, if the log books weren't also presumably in the same location.
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# ? Mar 6, 2018 02:49 |
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F-5 would nominally be Onia Burt Stanley's, however it was 'sold' to VF-42 on the Yorktown on March 14th. However, it didn't make the transfer, as it lost power shortly after takeoff and pilot Walt Haas ditched it a mile out from the Lexington.
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# ? Mar 6, 2018 03:13 |
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I'm really hyped about the discovery for several reasons, but one of them is that it's finally settled the age-old modeler's question of "what was the cockpit color of the F4F-3." It's green.
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# ? Mar 6, 2018 03:45 |
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goatface posted:As I understand it, navy pilots didn't have their own plane, they flew whichever was up in the rotation (anything else would require too much deck shuffling). So those are probably the combined kills attributed to that plane rather than any one pilot. If that plane was lost in March, why was it found near the wreck (from May)? Maybe im reading something wrong
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# ? Mar 6, 2018 03:48 |
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Lakedaimon posted:If that plane was lost in March, why was it found near the wreck (from May)? Maybe im reading something wrong well, actually, that tells us two things: the first is that the conjecture that planes were granted kills as opposed to pilots is likely incorrect. perhaps other people flew F-5 than its normally assigned pilot, but that pilot kept his kills on his plane (or else this new F-5 would likely have fewer kills). secondly it tells us that while the original F-5 was 'sold' to the Yorktown and ditched, that the replacement plane that came in got the same markings as the original F-5, thus adding weight to my argument that it was probably a specific pilot's plane. anyone happen to know how many kills Stanley had at the start of Coral Sea? (I am assuming that ground crew did not have time to add additional kills to the plane during the battle)
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# ? Mar 6, 2018 04:21 |
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Kills aren't and have never been assigned to planes, they're assigned to pilots. Pilots are assigned planes, which is why they get to name them and write their names on the side-however, just because a pilot is assigned a plane doesn't mean he's going to be the one who always flies it, which is where I think the confusion is coming from.
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# ? Mar 6, 2018 05:02 |
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Stanley had only flown his nominally assigned plane twice before. Also, US Navy squadrons 'sold' planes, and pilots, to other squadrons to fill them out pretty often early on in the war. After the Saratoga was torpedoed earlier in the year, VF-2 on Lexington was sold planes and pilots from VF-3, so they may still have kept the Felix the Cat while other markings were repainted. VF-2's plane F-5 was nominally assigned to Scoop Vorse.
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# ? Mar 6, 2018 05:31 |
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We start by losing a submarine. Who was stupid enough to make a surface attack. These Spitfires are murdering us! I think we're losing the air war here. We do kill a Liberator though. My lazy rear end carriers didn't send up a single sortie! So many targets unsunk! We also took very high air losses.
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# ? Mar 6, 2018 06:06 |
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lizurcainnon posted:Stanley had only flown his nominally assigned plane twice before. Also, US Navy squadrons 'sold' planes, and pilots, to other squadrons to fill them out pretty often early on in the war. After the Saratoga was torpedoed earlier in the year, VF-2 on Lexington was sold planes and pilots from VF-3, so they may still have kept the Felix the Cat while other markings were repainted. VF-2's plane F-5 was nominally assigned to Scoop Vorse. Where are you getting this information?
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# ? Mar 6, 2018 09:03 |
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PittTheElder posted:Where are you getting this information? I'm guessing its from The First Team, Pacific Naval Air Combat from Pearl Harbor to Midway quote:The aircraft nominally assigned each pilot on the basis of the squadron flight organization is shown, but a pilot rarely flew the assigned airplane, instead manning whatever fighter the flight leader and squadron duty officer assigned after learning from Air Plot the side number and deck position of the planes scheduled for the upcoming launch. Thus during the whole cruise Burt Stanley flew his nominally assigned aircraft (F-5, BuNo. 4009) only twice. 7 On 19 February (and also the next day), there were not sufficient aircraft for all of the pilots, as only sixteen of VF-3’s eighteen Grummans were flyable. It has a moving account of the end of the Lexington. quote:After the Lexington had recovered the last of her strike group, her aviators congregated on deck, hoping that damage control and repair would progress sufficiently for them to resume flight operations. The plane handlers had shifted all of the aircraft aft, and optimistically spotted the eight F4F fighters for takeoff. No one was more eager to go than VF-42’s orphan McCuskey, whose faithful F-2 was spotted number one. He along with some VF-2 pilots hoped for the word to man planes. V for Vegas fucked around with this message at 11:51 on Mar 6, 2018 |
# ? Mar 6, 2018 11:19 |
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Acebuckeye13 posted:Kills aren't and have never been assigned to planes, they're assigned to pilots. Pilots are assigned planes, which is why they get to name them and write their names on the side-however, just because a pilot is assigned a plane doesn't mean he's going to be the one who always flies it, which is where I think the confusion is coming from. Once air to air kills started becoming less common kills have, in fact, been assigned to individual planes. There are USAF F-15s wearing kill markings from the Gulf War and Bosnia even though their pilots have long since moved on to other things.
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# ? Mar 6, 2018 19:55 |
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Acebuckeye13 posted:Kills aren't and have never been assigned to planes, they're assigned to pilots. Pilots are assigned planes, which is why they get to name them and write their names on the side-however, just because a pilot is assigned a plane doesn't mean he's going to be the one who always flies it, which is where I think the confusion is coming from. at least this one collected kills over multiple pilots: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netz_107
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# ? Mar 6, 2018 20:20 |
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This was just from a brief check of Wikipedia so take it with a measure of salt, but the Wildcat found is supposedly the one flown by Albert O. Vorse Jr. in the battle. Someone who wants to go looking into pilot and squadron records can probably confirm this if they want.
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# ? Mar 6, 2018 21:24 |
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PittTheElder posted:Where are you getting this information? V for Vegas is right, the book The First Team is where I was getting the data. I'd just finished reading it a couple weeks ago, and remembered it had details on who was (nominally) flying which plane in a squadron. Somewhere in there it also has an example of how pilots got assigned to fly which craft on a particular sortie, with the director (probably remembering that position name wrong) yelling out the pilot's name and a the plane number of one of the warmed-up aircraft on the deck.
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# ? Mar 7, 2018 02:10 |
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If I recall my Shattered Sword correctly, the flexibility of American doctrine was useful in the sense that it allowed them to replenish depleted carrier air groups simply by shifting assignments around, rather than having to wait for a whole squadron to be rebuilt. Such an approach would have netted the Japanese an extra carrier at Midway if they did it, since as I recall one of the pair of Shokaku/Zuikaku was damaged at Coral Sea and was undergoing repairs, while the other had a depleted air group. If they had consolidated the squadrons, the undamaged carrier could have joined the Midway task force with a full complement.
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# ? Mar 7, 2018 05:01 |
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Another day, another wave of landings. Looking for subs, finding torpedoes. A dull day, but one I needed after the heavy losses of the last couple of weeks.
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# ? Mar 7, 2018 05:48 |
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Naruto sucks anyway.
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 04:03 |
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Those carriers better do something! The guns at least hit something. Dammit! The Spit's pay us a visit again. As do the Lightnings. Their subs are being very annoying at the moment. My Poor, poor planes!
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 05:30 |
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Yeah what's up with the planes lately? For a while it seemed like it was... well, it wasn't Operation Charnel Cloud is all I'm saying.
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 05:39 |
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The Zeroes on the KB were providing extra CAP while sitting in Rabaul, but while the carriers are out
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 07:14 |
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gradenko_2000 posted:If I recall my Shattered Sword correctly, the flexibility of American doctrine was useful in the sense that it allowed them to replenish depleted carrier air groups simply by shifting assignments around, rather than having to wait for a whole squadron to be rebuilt. Yeah, it was Zuikaku that lost its air group. They were sister ships, too, so it wasn't like Shokaku's airmen would have to retrain on a new carrier or anything. I think Shattered Sword also points out that air crews were shuffled around later in the war, and it worked just fine then, so really they could have gotten away with it at the time. But that would require outside-the-box, non-doctrinal thinking, which (for Imperial Japanese naval leadership) was essentially tantamount to treason.
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 10:29 |
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# ? Jun 8, 2024 07:42 |
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On hex south of Rabaul we find some new friends. A sub makes a surface attack. The captain is feeling ballsy today. I have no words to describe this. That was not a bad day. Rabaul went unbombed, which is always nice. And my surface ships claimed some nice kills.
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# ? Mar 8, 2018 19:18 |