yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

A Submarine Assault | WW2 Hell Under the Sea


2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

July 31st, 1944. With Commander Lawson Ramage fixated on another target in Japanese convoy MI-11, below deck, battle helmsman Chet Stanton has made the decision to evade an escort that threatens to ram the American submarine. The crew of USS Parche wait to see if Stanton acted quickly enough to avoid disaster. It's an incredibly stressful time for these guys; you're not actively involved in a fight, yet this fight determines whether or not you're going to live or die.

At 0:425, the submarine is halfway across the bow of the enemy ship. "Right full rudder!" Commander Ramage belatedly orders a hard turn starboard in time. Archie Stern swings clear; the American submarine narrowly escapes. Chet Stanton became something of a hero to the crew because had he not had the foresight to go ahead and order emergency all ahead, they would probably have been sliced in half.

"We're clear!" Archie's crew has outmaneuvered the Japanese escort, but a bigger challenge looms now. Deep within the convoy, an enemy transport lies straight ahead but is hemmed in by other vessels. Ramage has only one option: "You must target the bow," the narrowest part of the ship. Call it down the throat shot; it is not recommended if the enemy ship is more than 1500 yards away. Although the distance between Parche and its target is greater, Ramage decides to risk it.

The first torpedo misses, but Ramage fires two more. This time, his torpedoes strike true. Heavily damaged, the ship comes to a rumbling halt, and there's more good news: Ramage sees a gap in the convoy's vessels that crowded him. He wheels around to take aim at the wounded ship from its side—a bigger target and much easier shot to make.

A single torpedo finishes the vessel. Ramage's perseverance pays off; it turns out it is a transport ship that carries Japanese troops. More than 2,400 soldiers are lost at sea. Archie's stunning performance against convoy MI-11 will become known as Ramage's rampage. In less than an hour, Parche has fired 19 torpedoes and scored at least 14 hits. As submarine historian Clay Blair once said, this was the most dramatic 48 minutes of the entire submarine war.

As dawn breaks, Ramage gives the order to pull clear of the convoy. "Let's get out of here!" As they depart, they receive a message. All of a sudden, this Japanese ship starts signaling with the internationally recognized code for "What's your name? Who are you?" Ramage and his crew get a real kick out of that, and they're like, "Well, he's probably got paperwork to fill out too."

More Articles

View All
Khan Academy Student Demo
Hi everyone, this is Jeremy Shiffling from Khan Academy. Thanks so much for taking time to join me in this big week, either before the start of school or in the middle of the start of school, depending on where you’re calling from. But wherever you are in…
City So Real | Official Trailer
[Music] Hello, yes, I’m doing a documentary right now. Could you please give me a call back? What do I think about the city? I actually love it and hate it. That’s Chicago, though. It’s our one big happy family. The cries and the complaints of the people …
How To Make Traditional Greek Salad | Chef Wonderful
[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Chef: “I want to play in the garden, and I’m really excited today. Do you know why? We’re going to be cooking one of the most primal and the important dishes mankind has …
Relative pronouns | The parts of speech | Grammar | Khan Academy
Grammarians, we’re going to talk about relative pronouns today. What relative pronouns do is they link clauses together, specifically independent and dependent clauses. If you don’t know what independent and dependent clauses are, that’s okay. Just suffi…
Adapting when doing business with different cultures!
The old days when 80 percent of the Jets were owned by U.S corporations and 19 of the worldwide jet ownership was in Europe, it was one percent all around the rest of the world. Most of the people in the U.S or in Europe are used to Western ways of doing …
8 Habits keeping you Poor - Marcus Aurelius | STOICISM INSIGHTS
Every morning, millions of us wake up, grab our phones, and immediately start scrolling through a sea of notifications, messages, and updates. It’s the first thing we do, almost instinctively, as if our smartphones hold the secret to starting the day righ…