Drachinifel - naval history

It is only a slight exaggeration to state that the Americans spent about as much in the 1930s on ice cream for their navy as they did for their torpedoes. The reason was that ice cream was a vital assist to depression era recruiting.  It has been argued that the money should have been spent on the torpedoes, exccept that I am convinced that Harold "Betty" Stark would have wasted that money, too, with his criminal shenanigans and mismanagements as Bu-Ord and as CNO.     

She wound up in Vancouver in late 1944 early 1945 and just before she was sent out to join the British Pacific Fleet for the Kamikaze Kaukus off Okinawa she was painted WHITE.



I kid you NOT.

It would have been interesting.

Historically the USN has been intensely political, legalistic and chicane in its efforts to get what it wants. The Admirals' Revolt gave us the fleet we have. The "politics" of going after the RN booze barge, in this specific case, was part of a much larger effort (Successful, I might add. M.), to throw the British Royal Navy out of the Pacific Ocean, except on strictly American naval terms. They became a mere "task group" of an American task force, instead of an independent command, precisely because the Americans would not share their fleet trains, otherwise.

Pettiness runs hundreds of years long, and resentments for a service which takes her history seriously, can last centuries.

Our archetype hero, for example, the British considered a "pirate".  

USS Texas in drydock.



We do have some clever shipwrights.