Carriers at War

[Sir Slash]

I think I'm in LOVE.  :dreamer:

[Toonces]

It's like you got into my head and captured my dreams!   :dreamer:

[Strela]

It's like you got into my head and captured my dreams!   :dreamer:

Yep, my exact thoughts.

This is looking just unbelievable. I'm hopeful too that with the naval interest that has been created by the World of Warships titles will translate into a bigger group of players that will want to play a more historical game.

Having a solid 3D engine and a transition to a longer engagement time has to find some appeal to that community.

Personally, having loved Task Force 42 and it's ilk, i'm ready to put my cash down!

David

[SirAndrewD]

Amazing as usual. 

This thread is better than my play list on por....er...youtube.

And it's just as satisfying!   O:-)

[em2nought]

In all these years I've never seen that movie!  Oh, they've got it on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Morris-London-Walter-Brennan-Cooper/dp/B002DNLT1Q/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=task+force&qid=1564273028&rnid=2941120011&s=movies-tv&sr=1-3

[GroggyGrognard]

Fantastic screenshots!

[Tripoli]

Based on what I'm seeing, this will pretty much be a full price, first day purchase for me.   

[The_Admiral]

It's like you got into my head and captured my dreams!   :dreamer:

I think I'm in LOVE.  :dreamer:

Fantastic screenshots!

Thank you for your kindness as usual, boys. It means a lot to the young team. 
Also, I told them to stop breaking into your heads at night to steal your dreams, from what I gather it seems to be a recurring issue    ^-^

Amazing as usual. 

This thread is better than my play list on por....er...youtube.

And it's just as satisfying!   O:-)

Thank you Andrew.
If we ever do a Kickstater, I'll make sure to include a custom kleenex box as a part of a very aptly-named "stretch goal".

This is looking just unbelievable. I'm hopeful too that with the naval interest that has been created by the World of Warships titles will translate into a bigger group of players that will want to play a more historical game.

Having a solid 3D engine and a transition to a longer engagement time has to find some appeal to that community.

Personally, having loved Task Force 42 and it's ilk, i'm ready to put my cash down!

Thank you David.
Yes indeed I think that the WoWs community shouldn't be seen as a problem - more like a beautiful opportunity, as Wargaming's effort in the field certainly made WW2 naval warfare more mainstream than ever before. Just like a very noisy and flashy movie would (I am looking at you, Midway...), it can and will help with popularizing the genre and capturing the imagination of new potential players. The fact is, carriers - like submarines in a way - might be very popular topics in themselves, but on both counts WoWs and War Thunder have struggled to find them a functional spot in the line-up and their gameplay mechanics. WoWs carriers ends up being all about killing surface ships first (especially destroyers...!) instead of going for the enemy's carrier and battleline, which makes it a bit counter-intuitive and very frustrating for the "grunts" who have no proper way to defend themselves. I know a few players who might be willing to take a look at something new and possibly on the hardcore side of things, as long as it remains intuitive to play - we'll see how it goes...

In all these years I've never seen that movie!  Oh, they've got it on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Morris-London-Walter-Brennan-Cooper/dp/B002DNLT1Q/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=task+force&qid=1564273028&rnid=2941120011&s=movies-tv&sr=1-3

You might want to have a look at your PM box  ;)

A gem indeed. I like it how the art on the jacket doesn't convey one bit of the actual content, and makes it look like a romantic musical. Not sure I would have watched it by myself without someone on the team telling me about it. 

It is, in every means, one of the best movies made about inter-war and WW2 carrier aviation, with superb footage and a real intent to make it look authentic despite the obvious limitations of working on featuring ships that weren't around anymore (especially Langley & Sara). The whole plot is way more political and deep than you'd expect in the industry, considering it served the double purpose of being some sort of mausoleum dedicated to the heroes of early US carrier aviation, and a thinly veiled pamphlet against the anti-Navy stance of the Truman administration.

The movie came out the year of the Revolt of Admirals, that was among other factors triggered by the firing of Forrestal and the cancellation of USS United States. Naval aviation was under fire at that time, as a service supposedly made obsolete by the new Air Force types, but it only tells part of the story - the whole Navy and Marines Corps was feeling the heat.

There's no reason for having a Navy and Marine Corps. General Bradley [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff], tells me that amphibious operations are a thing of the past. We'll never have any more amphibious operations. That does away with the Marine Corps. And the Air Force can do anything the Navy can do, so that does away with the Navy

It probably didn't help that the aforementioned Secretary of Defense was himself a former Convair executive, which might partly explain why the B-36 seemed that hot at the time - "fortunately" Korea came and went shortly after, and the nonsense was finally put to rest. But it makes Task Force a much more significant movie than what it seems, the Navy being then involved in a struggle for its very existence, that was much debated and known in the public opinion and on the Hill. Obviously, it seems Hollywood couldn't get enough of the Navy glamour and more than happily helped the sailors make a case, although the public opinion was apparently adamantly siding with the Air Force on this one.

Ah, and also, in my view it is actually altogether a better movie than 1976's Midway, which makes its total absence of acknowledgement all the more surprising. Gary Cooper is just being Gary Cooper, but Jane Wyatt portrays a powerful woman lead despite the codes of the era (she actually sentimentally blackmails her husband into shame for accepting a civilian business consultant job, which would have made him leave the Navy and the carriers... Man it feels like watching a Soviet war drama :))). We all know how female characters are tough to feature in movies like that, as Midway or Pearl Harbor have clearly demonstrated, and it's - belatedly - refreshing to see how this one fits the plot. She's a nurse at Pearl Harbor too, but fortunately that's where the comparison ends 

The Wikipedia article on the matter is rather well-written, if anyone's interested. A good read! And also a bit of a disappointment if like me you were somewhat respectful of Omar Bradley's reputation for being cool-headed and objective in his judgement...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolt_of_the_Admirals

After all this, on one hand it is not that surprising that Forrestal ended up shortly thereafter having a carrier named after him - but, on the other hand, it is sort of strange that anyone would dare naming anything that floats after President Truman... Knowing CVN-75 was supposed to be named USS United States (like the ship Truman had cancelled) and ended up using anchors taken from the decommissioned USS Forrestal makes it sound all the more awkward

Based on what I'm seeing, this will pretty much be a full price, first day purchase for me.   

Thank you Tripoli! I am pretty sure you'll love having the box version around. At the very least, it might bring back some of the meaning the concept of "full price" lost somewhere along the way in the 2000s...

As a side-note, I make a lot of typos (and thank you for not throwing it at my face :-[ ) but I came across one that simply didn't make sense - a whole sentence was missing its last part. 
Here it is, complete and probably more relevant (hence the concept of manually merging contacts after that) :

Any further observation might confirm or rectify this, and if the two locations (the estimate and the contact report) are too much afar from each other, a second contact might be generated.

[smithcorp]

This looks great

[besilarius]

In regards to the bridge layout, when Yorktown, CV-10, was opened at Patriot's Point, South Carolina, the intention was stated of renovating the bridge to it's World War II layout.  This would depend on the donations to effect this, and I'm not sure if this was accomplished.  However, it was indicated that the Point had all they needed to proceed, if the funding became available.

[Tripoli]

The_Admiral    Here are a couple of images of flag plots, in case you hadn't come across them: 80-G-268173: USS Yorktown (CV 10), Flag Plot showing portside. Photographed by PHOM Smitty and PHOM3/C D.M. Evans, November 27, 1944.

[Tripoli]

80-G-268175: USS Yorktown (CV 10), Flag Plot showing forward starboard corner. Photographed by PHOM Smitty and PHOM3/C D.M. Evans, November 27, 1944. (2015/12/01).

[Tripoli]

80-G-268174: USS Yorktown (CV 10), Flag Plot showing radar equipment on the portside. Photographed by PHOM Smitty and PHOM3/C D.M. Evans, November 27, 1944. (2015/12/01).

[Tripoli]

80-G-268165: USS Yorktown (CV 10), Flag Plot showing radio equipment on portside. Photographed by PHOM Smitty and PHOM3/C D.M. Evans, November 27, 1944. (2015/12/01).

[The_Admiral]

In regards to the bridge layout, when Yorktown, CV-10, was opened at Patriot's Point, South Carolina, the intention was stated of renovating the bridge to it's World War II layout.  This would depend on the donations to effect this, and I'm not sure if this was accomplished.  However, it was indicated that the Point had all they needed to proceed, if the funding became available.

Some of the current CV10 shots were actually taken from the Patriot Point's official photo stream on Facebook and elsewhere. Fortunately some tourists took some shots too. I have some from CV12, having gone there myself 10 years ago. Unfortunately in both case I am pretty sure the cost ended up being prohibitive - even though some aspects were clearly "downgraded" and some vintage material was put back in shape (you can see that some of these CV10 photos don't show all too modern equipment) it still feels a bit empty. The flag plot aboard CV-10 today for instance is nowhere close to the mess it was on the photos I have and that Tripoli just found. I am afraid the sort of cost involved is just too prohibitive for these associations, that are all pretty much fighting for survival on a daily basis.

France only had one bloody museum ship (Colbert, a cute little post-war cruiser that was anchored in Bordeaux) and we threw it through the window, as public money wasn't enough to keep her in a proper state and nobody would pay for her (yeah, I know our GDP is smaller than California's, but still!!  ). I can't begin to imagine what's the situation like when you have to take care of a Essex or Iowa class behemoth... The latest news about the state of USS Texas are sadly sobering in that regard.  :-\

The_Admiral    Here are a couple of images of flag plots, in case you hadn't come across them: 80-G-268173: USS Yorktown (CV 10), Flag Plot showing portside. Photographed by PHOM Smitty and PHOM3/C D.M. Evans, November 27, 1944.

Oh dear...!!!

Super find Tripoli. I had lost hope - other places where I asked didn't find more than I had already, you're actually the first guy to come up with something new in terms of photograph. 
Yes I have some others resources of course, but we resorted to using references from pre-war US cruisers and BBs too, as command quarters should be quite comparable to pre-war CVs (a CV island isn't that big). Still, it is unbelievable that these ones couldn't be found on the US Navy online archive resource/NHHC (even though these are clearly the same classification system they use), and not even reachable in the online fund of the National archives. The vintage CV-10 shots I found coming from the very same collection were all found on wikimedia commons and private picture sellers (Alamy & the rest).

May I ask how you came across them? A "flag plot" search on flickr - that's the source, right? the USN museum official account https://www.flickr.com/people/127906254@N06/, or was that through Pinterest, maybe? - won't bring them up, and even the description in brackets on Google mostly comes back empty handed...

At any rate, great thanks Tripoli, if you have some more stuff you'd like to share I'll be happy to have them. I am particularly after shots taken from CA28 at Mare Island in 1943 during her refit (have only two of them although there should be more) and same thing with CA38 one year later. It's all part of the Mare Island photographic database, but you just can't access more than a few shots without getting there yourself. We'll have any content that would help, especially with the details up close (the contents of the black boards, the equipment, etc...). It does help our 3D artist, and allows him to cross-reference all the stuff we come across.

Great thanks again  O0

edit: ok I found a way to navigate the account's photos without too much pain... It's actually way more complete than whatever is available elsewhere on proper websites. To know I had that just under my nose... A few nice shots here and there, this is a great find. Thanks Tripoli!