My build in honor of the Arizona

1/200 scale

God Speed

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Damn son!

CoC 1 Removed by  brass

It's the night before the sneak attack.

What is going through the minds of the pilots right now?

Always wondered.

Happy Birthday dad, it was his 10th birthday surprise.  He said it was a scary time, everyone running around getting ready for an invasion

Her blood still flows.

Wow. 80 years.
A good friend of mine had an uncle on the Arizona. He goes every few years to see his uncles name on the memorial. My friends father was the twin brother of the uncle that died in the attack. He was on a destroyer in the Pacific during the war. He always had some crazy stories to tell.

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My Uncle Barney, Gunners Mate 2nd Class, served aboard the USS Nevada on Dec 7th, 1941. He was reassigned to the St. Louis within the week. Never forget!

On left
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The invitation to the Japanese to attack Hawaii, the Philippines, Wake, and numerous other islands and outposts will live in infamy as well.

A little less than 4 hours later, they attacked Guam as well.

Jon Voight really fucked up that speech in the movie. Sucked.

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Arizona memorial!

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List of all hands lost, inside the memorial

Went on vacation to the Islands a few years ago.  We stayed on Kauai. A trip to Pearl Harbor was a must for me, my wife and kids went along.  I hope they understand the magnitude of what Pearl Harbor is. I cried during the movies they played for us tourists.  

A survivor of the attack was there later in the day.  I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to shake his hand.  The line was over 100 people deep.  I was on my way back to my plane back to Kauai.  I stood and watched the honor the people gave him for as long as I could.  

Getting dusty in here

Picture on the Battleship Missouri.

Main guns Pointed over The Arizona.

My wife's b-day is Dec 6th. Each year as it draws near, I rail more and more about the dirty Japs and how they picked her birthday to attack.

I'm not sure if she's more annoyed by the inaccuracy or just the whole general stupidity of it, but I love it.

Ha

I remember being on a DET to Barbers Point, they put us up at the barracks (former hospital) on Ford Island, had to take a liberty boat past the Arizona to get to the other side of the harbor each day to get on a bus to get to the flight line, then make the trip back. It is sobering to know those sailors are still in there.

Every year this day comes around I wonder how much our government knew and how much they let happen. Every year that goes by I tend to learn more that makes me dislike FDR more.

I thought they emptied her of her oil?

Doesn’t speak much to ffdr but details very well that we knew for years that japan would eventually attack. It was basically decided that the PI would be lost and HI was just too expensive to properly defend.

Link

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God rest their souls, and the souls of all the brave men and women who gave their lives to fight evil in that war.

Very nice OP.

Amen

Fair Winds and Following Seas, lads.

I remember seeing Navy reports on the internet about damage assessments.  I think it was Tennessee or Maryland maybe that was hit by one of the 14-in battleship shells (converted to airplane bombs)  that got Arizona--except instead of penetrating the deck, the shell first stuck a main battery gun barrel.  A picture showed the gouge where the shell hit the barrel.  I wish I could find the report.  Could have been two exploded BBs.

ETA:

Found the report.  

I thought the (official) short version of the story was that we had broken their codes and knew they were coming, but the intelligence got lost or mishandled on the way up the chain of command?

And the slightly conspiracy version is that it was intentional, because FDR wanted an excuse to enter the war?

We were also intentionally denying them resources (oil), the main thrust was to get the Dutch oil fields in what I think is now Indonesia, Pearl Harbor was just to try and knock us back on our heels so they could consolidate the other gains and play defense long enough that we got sick of fighting.

Many of them expected to die.

-Jeffery Cox - Rising Sun, Falling Skies.

And my favorite story from the day, even if it was a doomed effort.

Impressive, very nicely done.

My father was 30 that day on a little gunboat the USS Sacramento second ship in from the point across from Battleship Row.

He was shaving when he heard aircraft and thought the army aircorps was buzzing the fleet but when he looked out the porthole he saw what he described as a Meatball on the side of the plane and realized it was a Japanese attack. Seconds later explosions began

They were all but unarmed and pretty much at the center of the attack but the small ships docked there were so useless they were not targets
They mostly fished survivors from the water and watched bewildered and pissed

Navy put a second bronze plaque on his grave as a Pearl Harbor survivor. It really was "The Day" of his life

I confess I paid no attention to his "war stories" and now wish I had made tape recordings of every detail but alas

I'm only 15 min in but I expect it to be good. Battleship New Jersey is supposed to be doing a live stream today also. I think that starts about the same time as the attack did.

Standing on the Arizona memorial and on the Missouri were two moments I will never forget in my life. I have an almost identical photo.

Those sailors thought they were stationed in paradise ‘til those bombs fell.

A day to remember indeed, it's a day that Japan would live to regret.

Today is also a Military funeral for
Thomas J Kelly, born in 1956. He served the the United States Marine Corps., 1974-1978 and also in Vietnam. He lived in Tonopah AZ.

He was a fighter, having beaten cancer 4 times over his lifetime. He retired last year.

My best friend; he loved shooting so much that he moved out of Buckeye to Tonopah so he was with in 10 min of his favorite place to shoot. We first met on 1919a4.com and later discovered he had a semi-auto 1919a4 which he invited me out to try and that would spark me to build my own. This was 2006.

Believe he was a member here but don't remember his username. He didnt have any particular favorite rifles, everything was fun for him as long it went bang and hit paper he would adjust the sights or optic to make it more accurate.

The original strike assessment sketch drawn by and presented to Emperor Hirohito in person by lead pilot of the attack Commander Mitsuo Fuchida in a briefing three weeks afterwards (says December 8th because the IJN used Tokyo time wherever they were):
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A bombing instructor, then carrier combat veteran against the Chinese, made CAG of Akagi in 1939, Fuchida led Japanese torpedo bombers on the first wave of the attack on Pearl Harbor and personally issued the "Tora! Tora! Tora!" radio message, indicating complete surprise achieved.  He remained aloft to observe the second wave and begin his BDA and returned his aircraft to the carrier with 21 flak damage holes and a vital control cable parted by all but one strand, making him a national hero.  He was granted an incredibly rare audience with the emperor where he presented the sketch above.

 Temporarily grounded by illness, Fuchida was wounded at Midway on Akagi's bridge, permanently medically grounded as a result of his wounds he spent the rest of the war doing staff work.  He was ordered out of Tinian two weeks before it fell and all his co-workers there committed ritual suicide.  He was called away from a conference in Hiroshima the day before it was destroyed by the first atom bomb, vaporizing all of his coworkers.  He returned the day after as part of a damage assessment team, a somber mirror image of his prideful strike assessment of 1941.  All of the Hiroshima damage assessment team except Fuchida shortly died of radiation exposure and he was hospitalized.  He got out just in time to attend the surrender ceremony aboard the Missouri.

While scratching a living as a chicken farmer he was called to testify at a war crimes trial which infuriated him with evidence of widespread Japanese torture and murder of POW's.  Determined to present evidence at the next trial that the US was no better he went to meet a friend returning from a POW camp in Colorado, but his friend described good treatment and told him how he had been befriended by a nurse whose missionary parents were beheaded by Japanese troops occupying the Philippines.

All his preconceptions shattered, Fuchida was passing through a train station when he was handed the pamphlet "I Was a Prisoner of Japan" by Doolittle Raid bombardier Jacob DeShazer, who was captured during the 1943 raid and subjected to 34 months of torture and solitary confinement by the Japanese while three of his crew were executed and one died of starvation.  DeShazer became a devout Christian late in his captivity and resolved to do missionary work in Japan after the war.  DeShazer felt guilt for the 50 Japanese killed and 400 wounded by the Doolittle Raid, some of whom were civilians, and in 1948 he had returned to Japan to preach mercy and forgiveness, starting with the pamphlet in Fuchida's hand and later building a church in the city he bombed, Nagoya.  Fuchida was moved to read the bible, converted to Christianity and befriended DeShazer, and spent the rest of his life as a missionary.

Fuck the WWII japanese war lords. They chose to disregard their admiral yamamoto, who knew what he was talking about out of pure arrogance and paid one hell of a price.

Nope.  Doing so would risk collapsing a tank and producing a damaging spill.  Better to let it leak out slowly.

Mr. Fuchida is lucky we dropped the A-bombs to end the war instead of launching Operation Downfall, the amphibious invasion of Japan. At that point in the war and having seen the savagery of the japanese empire, the invasion force was gonna pound those islands with every shell available til they were barren moonscapes. Then when the army and marines hit the beaches it was gonna be straight up take no prisoners kill them all and burn it the fuck down. Lord knows the allies at that point were willing to kill every man, woman, and child to end the war. Downfall would have been the single largest bloodbath and firestorm in human history.