[HN Gopher] Mapping 20k ships that sank during WW II
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Mapping 20k ships that sank during WW II
Author : ohjeez
Score : 226 points
Date : 2024-09-03 15:38 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (storymaps.arcgis.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (storymaps.arcgis.com)
| shultays wrote:
| <3 the scrolling implementation of this website. The browser
| scroll is as default, nothing is hijacked. It is just the
| background & images on webpage are updated as you scroll it
| creating those animations. You can use page down, space key, the
| scrollbar or whatever to scroll and it just works
| JohnMakin wrote:
| I don't. Please stop making sites in this style - it isn't easy
| to navigate, especially if you're disabled. I find it extremely
| obnoxious and immediately exit this style of webpage.
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| I think NY Times started long back and this style was kinda
| "cool" that goes well with the narrative. Then, there is
| https://pudding.cool that does this pretty well. Now, many
| just copy and tries without a meaningful treatment and is
| just there - kinda not working-out in most cases.
|
| Tip: Try reading with Reader Mode.
| layer8 wrote:
| Reader Mode doesn't show any pictures here (Safari).
| stilldavid wrote:
| The NYT did kick this off with Snow Fall and it won a
| Pulitzer the following year.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/index.html
| JohnMakin wrote:
| In the NYT story, it makes much more sense (also the way
| it's implemented is far less offensive). It makes sense
| because it was trying to tell a story, and the slide show
| gives more emotional impact to it. That's cool! I still
| don't like it and would prefer just the story, but I see
| why it makes sense here.
|
| however, when you're trying to convey information, this
| style of page is offensively bad and I doubt is really
| doing you any favors - inline images and videos do the
| exact same thing you're trying to accomplish here without
| all the obnoxiousness.
| metabagel wrote:
| You haven't explained why it's "offensively bad".
|
| I feel like the tight integration of text and visual
| content does an excellent job of telling the story.
| There's no confused looking around for what goes with
| what. It's all tied together into a seamless narrative,
| sort of like television documentary style.
|
| It seems like the issue you have is with scrolling down,
| but that's an advantage, because it means you can go at
| your own pace.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| I have in the grandparent comment - it's not easily
| usable to many types of disabilities, chiefly - and it
| does nothing to augment the information it is trying to
| convey. this site also renders poorly, as others have
| mentioned. Just adds absolutely nothing to the page, so
| it is offensively bad in that I want to read what it says
| but cannot/will not.
| metabagel wrote:
| I hear where you're coming from, and that's totally
| valid.
|
| For me, it does add value, and that's totally valid too.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| Thanks for that perspective. I lost sight of the fact not
| everyone is like me, but to be fair to my righteous anger
| about this kind of thing, is that probably more people
| like you are like me and due to the nature of how design
| decisions are made, that leaves huge neglected parts of
| the population after a time.
|
| What value does it add for you?
| metabagel wrote:
| Why isn't it easy to navigate? You only need to scroll down.
| You don't need to click any of the links in order to
| appreciate the basic content.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| Do you understand disabilities exist? frame it in that
| light and it may make more sense. I'm not publicly
| disclosing my disabilities on this handle.
| metabagel wrote:
| Sorry, I had assumed you meant a physical disability,
| which probably wasn't a good assumption to make. (And I
| in no way say that in order to be rude. Most of us are
| limited in some way. I think you just find it difficult
| to process information in this format.)
|
| For what it's worth, you can probably get what you want
| here:
|
| https://ww2sunkenships.ca/
| sonofhans wrote:
| I've done a lot of UX work with and for people with
| various disabilities. I can make a few guesses about
| aspects of this site which are difficult, but I don't
| know about you personally. It could be visual
| difficulties making the low-contrast hard to read, or the
| overly-controlled layout making text-zooming difficult.
| Perhaps it's poor source order screwing up a screen
| reader. Perhaps attention or anxiety issues make the
| constant motion too much to bear, or concentrate through.
|
| Each of these has a different solution, or type of
| solution. Calling out any of those problems might be
| useful feedback for the site authors, or for industry
| professionals here.
| jksflkjl3jk3 wrote:
| It's still bad. Just let everything load and scroll like a
| normal plain webpage. All these gimmicks make it annoying to
| read.
| shultays wrote:
| I think the visuals are subjective (and imo think they are
| fine). I was mostly talking about how "custom scroll" and
| animations that reacts to scrolling is implemented. If one
| wants to implement one, this is an OK way of doing it in my
| opinion
| layer8 wrote:
| Not a good experience here, because I scroll more quickly than
| the background stuff takes time to load, and it's not clear if
| something is broken, or when loading is complete for the
| current part. It's messy and distracts from the actual
| contents, and has no apparent benefit for the reader, compared
| to a normal fixed document layout.
| sorrythanks wrote:
| For the curious, this interaction is called "Scrollytelling".
|
| It's very enjoyable for some people. It makes me feel
| physically sick. But that's okay, I'm okay with the idea that
| not everything on the internet is aimed at me.
| radicalbyte wrote:
| I came here to post the exact opposite. It's certainly the
| marmite of web design.
| dxdm wrote:
| The presentation feels like watching a movie through a drinking
| straw, but yeah, I guess the "straw controls" are not hijacked
| and I can point the straw smoothly to places that haven't fully
| loaded yet. :]
| mwbajor wrote:
| We use this website for diving off the US East coast.
|
| https://www.facebook.com/p/Eastern-Search-Survey-10006355294...
|
| ESS has mapped and imaged many ships off the eastern seaboard,
| some sunk by U-boats during WW1 and WW2. The images and data
| collected are excellent.
| runxel wrote:
| On a related note: Those ships are highly sought after. At some
| point there will probably a startup using this data to salvage
| all these ships.
|
| Why? Because it was before the nuclear bomb and all the other
| desasters that followed which actually permanently raised our
| background radiation levels. And because these ships were and
| still are underwater, they have been largely unaffected by this.
|
| It might not seem much but apparently the radiation difference is
| enough, so for things that go into your body (like after an
| operation) only this old steel is used.
|
| Or so I was told by a friend working in medical.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It was a thing.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel
|
| Since we've stopped nuclear testing, though, it's returned
| pretty close to normal, and such steel is no longer as sought
| after.
|
| > World anthropogenic background radiation levels peaked at
| 0.11 mSv/yr above natural levels in 1963, the year that the
| Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was enacted. Since then, by
| about 2008, anthropogenic background radiation has decreased to
| 0.005 mSv/yr above natural levels.
| jprd wrote:
| This is also graverobbing, and very not cool. Most wrecks
| will have sailors/soldiers/merchantmen entombed.
|
| Parent comment is 100% correct, unfortunately this doesn't
| stop people from continuing to do it to this day.
| tadfisher wrote:
| There is nothing left of those remains. The flesh was gone
| between a few days to a year or so depending on the water
| temperature. Microorganisms feed on the collagen binding
| the inorganic matrix, reducing the bones to dust within 10
| years at the most.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| This is true of most remains, but someone still typically
| gets a bit peeved if you dig up the cemetery.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/09/images-
| reveal-...
|
| > Naval shipwrecks are granted sovereign immunity under
| international law and remain the property of their
| nations, in this case Japan. These protections makes it
| illegal to destroy them without permission from Tokyo.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_the_Protectio
| n_o...
| azernik wrote:
| They don't need to have been underwater; the steel just has
| to have been made pre-1945. The steelmaking process
| incorporates of lot of gases into the final product.
| tedmcory77 wrote:
| I still don't understand why ore dug up out of the ground and
| made into steel is more effected by this than this steel.
| (Edit, made into steel, not iron)
| JohnMakin wrote:
| mostly because steel is used for things like particle
| accelerators that are understandably very sensitive to
| contamination - as a sibling comment noted this is not much
| of an issue anymore.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That's the why, not the how.
|
| The how is impurities from the air are introduced during
| the _forging_ process
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bessemer_process /
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_oxygen_steelmaking),
| not the _mining_ process.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| Yea - the parent was confused about the why.
| Teever wrote:
| It's because the smelting process introduces a lot of
| isotopes into steel when you make it.
|
| I assume that they find big pieces of already smelted steel
| in the ocean and just grind away the rust / mill it into the
| shape they want.
| jabl wrote:
| When you turn iron ore into steel with blast furnaces and
| steel making (e.g. basic oxygen process) you blast it with
| atmospheric air (or oxygen made from atmospheric air), and
| tiny amounts of impurities in the air (such as fallout from
| atmospheric nuclear testing) get embedded in the steel.
|
| Yes, this is the same air you're breathing. No, the levels
| are not high enough to be a health issue. But it's an issue
| for very sensitive scientific instruments and such.
| pimlottc wrote:
| Also to note that, in theory, you could use purified oxygen
| for the forging and create new steel similar to low-
| background radiation steel, but it would be ridiculously
| expensive given how much oxygen is used.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Steelmaking is the combination of iron ore and carbon (from
| coked coal) with huge amounts of forced air or direct oxygen
| to form the alloy of carbon and iron we call steel.
|
| One notable form of radioactive contamination is Carbon-14,
| which is what makes radiocarbon dating after ~1950
| unreliable. Though of course since the carbon in coal is
| itself primordial, _that_ isn 't the principle route of steel
| contamination.
|
| Best I can make out it's radioactive isotopes _in the air
| itself_ which increase the radiation background of post-WWII
| steel, with several sites mentioning Cobalt-60. Substances
| used in the post-smelting processing of steel (welding rods
| and the like) may also introduce contamination.
|
| Given the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty which has halted
| _most_ atmostpheric nuclear testing, radiation levels have
| fallen to the point that current steel is largely similar to
| pre-WWII "low-emissivity" steel in terms of background
| radiation.
|
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel>
| jabl wrote:
| > At some point there will probably a startup using this data
| to salvage all these ships.
|
| FFS, yes this is HN and all, but why does everything have to be
| a "startup"?
|
| FWIW, there's lots of under-the-radar (apparently mostly
| Chinese) companies that are hard at work breaking up these
| ships and selling them for scrap. Considering many of those
| wrecks are war graves, a lot of people are kind of upset by
| this.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| There's a value to scrap steel but it's not all that great,
| and the low-rad steel isn't as much in demand as it used to
| be. Many of these ships are likely in such deep water that
| they aren't worth salvaging.
| Loughla wrote:
| Seriously though, it's no longer starting a small business or
| even a business. It's a startup. Is this just a change in the
| language, or is there an appreciable difference between a new
| salvage business and new salvage startup?
| mannyv wrote:
| China and others have been harvesting old wrecks for exactly
| this/
| devilbunny wrote:
| Nah, they don't use low-rad steel for medical implants. Mostly
| for scientific instruments that would thrown off by even a
| small rise in background radiation.
|
| IIRC the bulk of the supply came from the scuttled German fleet
| at Scapa Flow, where the ships involved were not graves - they
| were intentionally scuttled by the crew, who got off and were
| rescued.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| Honestly the loss of life is kind of horrifying. Especially when
| you consider the vast majority were unarmed transport ships of
| some kind. I cannot imagine slowly trawling along in some tanker
| when suddenly you're under fire from a uboat with no way to shoot
| back.
|
| I feel like we're 'sleepwalking towards war' today with China
| over Taiwan (many top military brass have said they expect a war
| later this decade), and to be brutally frank, it's kind of insane
| to me that the powers that be have decided a mountainous island
| and some computer chips are worth the sacrifice of hundreds of
| thousands or even millions of human lives. I hope sanity
| prevails.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| What would be the more sane version? Allow nuclear armed states
| to invade whoever they want whenever they want?
| jonplackett wrote:
| This comment comes from a misguided position of believing USA
| are in the position to allow or disallow. As this article
| shows, 'disallow' is not as straight forward as it seems.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| It's not solely up to the USA. The larger question remains,
| how does the world prevent nuclear states from simply
| taking over their neighbors?
| dukeyukey wrote:
| By giving nuclear states a vested interest in maintaining
| the world order as it is. We've mostly managed to do that
| so far, even if with Ukraine and potentially Taiwan it's
| looking a bit iffy.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Yeah, and obviously so long as that continues then the US
| won't go to war... the conversation is about what happens
| if China invades Taiwan.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| It seems like the current system is working, since it
| hasn't really happened?
|
| Otherwise wouldn't Russia have just walked into Ukraine
| with a nuke saying "we're the boss now or eveyone is
| dead"?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Russia has consistently used nuclear blackmail in
| Ukraine.
|
| The West has responded with a very slow, incremental
| ramping up of aid to avoid triggering it.
|
| If Russia didn't have nukes, the situation in Ukraine
| would look very different.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Why is Russia fighting an actual war with half a million
| casualties if nuclear blackmail works?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Nuclear blackmail is what stops NATO from ending the war
| overnight tomorrow with a massive air assault on Russian
| troops in Ukraine. Instead, we ship arms over the border
| and wring our hands with every small ratcheting up of aid
| calibrated to hopefully not trigger it.
|
| Blackmail doesn't have to be perfect to be functional.
| The West has correctly assessed "they're not going to
| nuke us over x" so far, but it remains a consideration.
| jonplackett wrote:
| Another way to think about it though is without nukes
| there'd be nothing stopping NATO and Russia blowing the
| crap out of each other. That might not actually be
| better.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| If we ignore nibbling up bits of various sovereign
| nations while we look away and hope it stops, sure.
|
| Russia isn't gonna stop with Ukraine just like they
| didn't with Georgia and Moldova.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Who is under the impression that the USA
| allowing/disallowing is straightforward? Do you think it's
| some secret that war is costly?
| jonplackett wrote:
| sadly for some people yeah
| criddell wrote:
| The more sane version is China leaving Taiwan alone.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Well... sure.
| jjulius wrote:
| ... I dunno, _not_ going to war over something like that,
| maybe?
| llamaimperative wrote:
| So to allow nuclear armed states to invade whoever they
| want, got it.
| jjulius wrote:
| Ah, thank you for adhering to general internet commenting
| guidelines, where we insert words into others mouths that
| _aren 't_ the most generous interpretation of what they
| could be saying. No, I certainly wouldn't have stepped
| back further, as another respondent said, and argued that
| China should leave Taiwan alone, nope - I _definitely_
| insinuated that nuclear-armed states should invade folk
| at their own whim and we should do nothing about it.
|
| Yep, you're right, that's definitely where I was going
| with it.
|
| Edit: To make things perfectly clear, "not going to war"
| _starts_ with "don't invade another country". I'm not
| sure how that isn't obvious.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| The premise of the conversation is China deciding to
| invade Taiwan.
|
| "Would prefer if they didn't" is a sensible position to
| hold and not an actual contribution to the conversation.
| jjulius wrote:
| No, the premise of the conversation is "sleepwalking
| towards war". Sleepwalking involves doing things that
| you're not aware you're doing, which could have dire
| consequences. The alternative is to wake up and be
| conscious of moving things in the right direction.
|
| Sensible positions worth holding _are_ valid
| contributions to conversations.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Okay then we can conclude here: everyone agrees that we
| should avoid sleepwalking into war.
|
| Fruitful! Highly informative as to what decisions need to
| be made henceforth.
| jjulius wrote:
| Not sure why you feel the need to gatekeep the kinds of
| responses we can give to your question - you asked, and I
| sure wasn't the only one with that answer. But maybe
| you're right - maybe we should cherry pick what we
| discuss, you never know if Xi will stumble upon this very
| HN thread and realize that he needs to change course
| thanks to our highly informative discussion.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| No one here thinks Xi should go invade Taiwan.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Yeah, that's the "just give Hitler Czechoslovakia and hope
| he's satisfied" approach.
|
| It hasn't historically worked that well.
| jjulius wrote:
| "Not going to war" starts with "don't invade another
| country".
| ceejayoz wrote:
| China gets to "don't invade another country" with regards
| to Taiwan.
|
| If China chooses to invade, the US is left with a choice
| of how to intervene. "No war" isn't on the table any
| more, even if the US choice is "don't get involved in the
| war and let our ally get clobbered".
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| When I say I 'hope that sanity prevails' I'm hoping that
| China realizes Taiwan isn't worth the cost. I'm also
| extremely dubious that it's worth 10's or even 100's of
| thousands of American lives for us to intervene. I'm happy
| for us to sell Taiwan as many weapons as they want for them
| to defend themselves, but I draw the line at putting American
| lives at risk for a country that has taken a negligent
| attitude to it's own defenses in the hopes that we bail them
| out.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Directionally agreed, but what gives you reason to say
| Taiwan has neglected its own defenses in the hopes that we
| bail them out?
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| I compare them with Israel, another small nation with
| high defense needs. They've spent less than 2% of their
| GDP on defense until very recently, they don't have a
| strong history of conscripting and training their
| civilian population. In short, they seem to have operated
| under the assumption that the united states would ride in
| to save the day.
|
| I am a little sick of seeing the US, a country with two
| friendly neighbors, and massive oceans between us and our
| nearest peer adversaries spend ~ 1T / yr on defense to be
| the 'world's police'. The real threat to our security is
| at home.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Why is 2% a meaningful number? Less than that is
| insufficient and more than that is sufficient? Taiwan
| couldn't effectively defend itself against China
| regardless of how much it spends on defense. Nor could
| any other country on the planet except potentially the
| US.
|
| > I am a little sick of seeing the US, a country with two
| friendly neighbors, and massive oceans between us and our
| nearest peer adversaries spend ~ 1T / yr on defense to be
| the 'world's police'.
|
| If you think the US isn't a major beneficiary of global
| peace and open trade, you are very mistaken. It isn't a
| charity project, it's a strategy.
|
| > The real threat to our security is at home.
|
| What does this mean?
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| >Taiwan couldn't effectively defend itself against China
| regardless of how much it spends on defense.
|
| They don't have to be able to defeat China to deter them,
| they simply have to make an invasion too costly to be
| worth it. Google porcupine strategy.
|
| If Taiwan was serious about their defense, they would
| have a higher percentage of their population conscripted
| and trained for longer. They would have been spending a
| _much_ higher proportion of their GDP on defense. The
| fact that they 've done neither of these things tells me
| they're passing the buck to us and expecting the US to
| pay the cost (in both money and lives) of their defense,
| and I don't think we should.
|
| >If you think the US isn't a major beneficiary of global
| peace and open trade, you are very mistaken.
|
| You don't think the world had free trade before US
| hegemony? The truth is that other countries would step up
| and help shoulder the burden instead of simply relying on
| us to do everything.
|
| I'm extremely doubtful of the benefit to the _average us
| citizen_ of the _tens of trillions_ of dollars in us
| military expenditures since WWII. I think we would find
| ourselves in a more stable, prosperous country had we
| spent that money on education, infrastructure and
| healthcare.
|
| Regardless, I'm not interested in continuing this
| conversation further. We're not going to change each
| others minds.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Again, what benchmark are you using to assess the
| sufficient level of deterrence, GDP ratio, or
| conscription?
|
| As far as I can tell, we have solid empirical evidence
| that those things _are_ sufficient, based on the fact
| that China hasn 't invaded.
|
| > The truth is that other countries would step up and
| help shoulder the burden instead of simply relying on us
| to do everything.
|
| Right... and they would each overlay their own
| protectionist policies.
|
| I don't know who in here said the US's military
| expenditures are optimal, but it wasn't me. I hope you
| find 'em so you can tell them they're wrong!
| gamepsys wrote:
| That seems to be the recent business plan of the military
| industrial complex. Wars aren't popular among US voters,
| and military recruitment numbers are struggling. Instead,
| if we sell slightly dated weapons to foreign armies then
| the money keeps flowing into our war economy.
|
| I think this strategy will only work because of MAD, and
| it's essentially a modification of our previous proxy war
| strategies that existed prior. It has several risks and
| benefits. I'm worried that the separation Americans feel
| (we aren't at war, one of our allies we are heavily
| supporting is) isn't the same level of separation that the
| other side of the conflict feels. I'm worried that some of
| these allies will be manipulated into conflicts in order to
| generate customers. I'm worried that if our soldiers are
| needed too many of them won't have combat experience, which
| improves their effectiveness. I'm worried that the loss of
| life will have less of an emotional impact when it's
| happening to other people far away.
|
| The benefit of not risking American lives while still
| maintaining cashflow for weapons R&D is massive though.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Not a new strategy, predates MAD.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease
|
| > I'm worried that some of these allies will be
| manipulated into conflicts in order to generate customers
|
| Manipulated into being invaded?
| mandibles wrote:
| Isn't that the current _status quo_?
| llamaimperative wrote:
| No, as evidenced by the massive amounts of western arms
| currently preventing the rape and pillaging of the capital
| of a democratic European city.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| Well, that and the 23 million people who live there.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| A long time ago I was a Merchant Marine cadet. One of the
| classes we had to take during senior year was on working with
| the Navy during conflict/all out war.
|
| As we were working through the Convoy Operations unit, I
| remember thinking that it was basically bullshit. You're in a
| group of other merchant ships being protected by the US Navy,
| but the maneuvers were based on an enemy with a WW2 level of
| technology. If you are attacked by any modern force that
| somehow managed to get through the outer ring of defense, as a
| merchant vessel, you might as well start lowering lifeboats.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Big wars are also historically how we (humanity) have gotten
| out of financial depressions.
| metabagel wrote:
| Superficially, it might look that way, but war is a drag on
| the economy. Generally, there have to be sacrifices made to
| support a war economy.
| aklemm wrote:
| aka hoarding fishing spots!
| zeitgeistcowboy wrote:
| What a great example of an https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptronym
| . This guy's last name is Heersink and he's finding out where all
| the boats sank.
| tmrtsmith wrote:
| And Nominative Determinism
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism
| coryfklein wrote:
| Wow that article is full of gold: * Justice named Igor Judge
| * Lawyer named James Counsell * Lawyer named Sue Yoo *
| Weather reporter named Storm Field * Vicar named Michael
| Vickers * Orthopedic surgeons named Limb, Limb, Limb, and
| Limb
| polishdude20 wrote:
| Reminds me of Andrej Karpathy. "car pathy" And he worked on
| Tesla Autopilot.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Sometimes I feel like the universe really is a simulation and
| these names are the result of QA testers having a little bit of
| fun keeping track of who's who.
| mkapoor26 wrote:
| Interesting thing is he spent eight years creating a
| comprehensive dataset of over 14,500 mapped records of sunken
| ships...why??
| ghaff wrote:
| People have obsessive hobbies. There are tons of examples.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| For context, the contemporary commercial merchant fleet is about
| 80,000 ships, roughly a third of which are bulk liquid carriers
| (a/k/a oil tankers). As a percentage, that's actually down from
| the 1970s/80s when _half_ of all commercial ships were tankers.
| Most of the growth has been in container ships.
|
| Relevant to WWII, oil tanker losses by the US alone were
| staggering. "A total of 129 tankers were lost in American waters
| in the first five months of 1942."
| (<https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/operation-
| drumbeat...>).
|
| A consequence was the US government building the first long-
| distance oil pipelines, the "Big Inch" and "Little Big Inch"
| pipelines from east Texas to refineries on the Atlantic seaboard
| in New Jersey. They remain in use.
|
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Inch>
|
| I've also realised that both whales and large-scale commercial
| shipping rely on similar circumstances: the ability to on- and
| off-board cargo (or food) rapidly, widely-separated ports (or
| feeding grounds), and no significant predators (or war / piracy
| hazards). Whales are a remarkably recent evolutionary
| development, with the large great whales dating back only about 5
| million years. Similarly, bulk shipping required not only global
| markets but cargos which could be handled in aggregate, whether
| liquids (as with petroleum), dry solids (mostly ores), or
| containerised miscellaneous cargo, the latter being premised on
| standardisation. Canals, safe shipping routes, and quayside cargo
| handling capacity were also prerequisites.
| OJFord wrote:
| So before then they shipped it around South America? Why not
| trains I wonder? Seems like a natural precursor to a dedicated
| pipeline.
| dmoy wrote:
| They shipped it from the Gulf of Mexico, around Florida/
| Cuba, and up the coast to the eastern US. (And there was a
| lot of Mississippi river <-> ocean traffic too)
|
| And some of them got torpedoed by German submarines around
| there. (E.g. off the coast of Louisiana)
|
| No rounding South America involved.
|
| > Why not trains
|
| Way cheaper to ship by boat up the coast.
| dmoy wrote:
| > Way cheaper to ship by boat up the coast.
|
| Corollary: one reason we see a mismatch here in modern days
| is the long term effect of the Jones Act. WWII was only a
| couple decades after Jones Act, and there was still a huge
| domestically flagged merchant marine. Today, not so much.
| It's illegal for a non-US flagged ship to go between two US
| ports, so we see more done by train.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| This was Texas (and perhaps Oklahoma and Louisiana) oil.
| Texas alone produced a huge fraction of the oil used by _all_
| parties during WWII, with Russia being the other major
| supplier.
|
| Texas oil shipped from Gulf of Mexico ports (probably Port
| Arthur, though there may have been others), around Florida,
| and up the East coast of the US, principally to New Jersey
| where the major East Coat refineries were. Probably Bayway
| Refinery, owned and operated by Phillips 66.
|
| There was no significant oil transport around South America
| so far as I'm aware. West-coast oil was supplied out of
| California, presumably the Pacific Theatre as well.
| bell-cot wrote:
| My recollection is that they did use trains, at least during
| the worst parts of the war. (In terms of tanker losses &
| shortages.)
|
| But an oil tanker is _vastly_ more efficient than train full
| of tanker cars. And the supplies of tanker cars, rail lines,
| locomotives, & etc. were all pretty constrained.
| meowster wrote:
| > oil tanker losses by the US alone were staggering. "A total
| of 129 tankers were lost in American waters in the first five
| months of 1942."
|
| Of the U.S. services, the U.S. Merchant Marine had the highest
| casualty rate in WWII of 4%, followed by the U.S. Marines at
| 2%.
|
| Attacking the supply lines is an important strategy in war.
|
| https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/merchant-mari...
|
| http://www.usmm.org/ww2.html
| KK7NIL wrote:
| Is the US Merchant Marine a "US service"?
|
| They aren't an officially recognized uniformed service [0]
| even though they do have uniforms, a paramilitary structure
| and (those which are US citizens) can be called for mandatory
| service [1].
|
| Not taking away from their very real service and sacrifice,
| it's just an interesting question what we mean by "US
| service".
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniformed_services_of_the_U
| nit...
|
| [1] https://www.usmma.edu/admissions/service-obligation
| dredmorbius wrote:
| _Is the US Merchant Marine a "US service"?_
|
| They are (or have been) during wartime, attaching to the US
| Navy:
|
| _During World War II the fleet was in effect nationalized;
| that is, the federal government controlled the cargo and
| the destinations, contracted with private companies to
| operate the ships, and put guns and Navy personnel, the
| Navy Armed Guard, on board._
|
| U.S. Department of Transportation Maritime Administration
| FAQ
|
| <https://web.archive.org/web/20150411091000/http://www.mara
| d....>
| dredmorbius wrote:
| The US submarine warfare operation in the Pacific was also
| absolutely devastating to Japan, particularly as that country
| has virtually no indigenous mineral or energy resources.
|
| A large part of Japan's invasion of China (from whence it
| _could_ reasonably readily ship resources) was China 's own
| mineral supplies, particularly coal an iron. For petroleum
| though the nearest viable source was Indonesia (then the
| Dutch East Indies), and the US sank much of what moved from
| there.
|
| This fact, as well as my parent comment above about U.S.
| east-coast oil shipping and pipeline construction are quite
| well covered in Daniel Yergin's book _The Prize_. If you want
| an appreciation for just how much oil transformed the US and
| world, it is an absolutely excellent resource. And that 's
| from someone who's not partial to Yergin's oil-industry
| boosterism.
| Steve44 wrote:
| The National Memorial Arboretum in the UK has a memorial
| dedicated to the Merchant Navy. When visiting the scale of it
| is thought provoking, each tree represents a lost UK ship.
|
| https://www.iwm.org.uk/memorials/item/memorial/13633
|
| > A wood of oak trees representing the 'convoy' of merchant and
| fishing vessels lost in conflicts of the 20th Century,
| resulting in the deaths of 46,000 crew. The 2,535 trees each
| represent a ship lost during WW2.
|
| There is also a memorial at Tower Hill to those with no known
| grave.
|
| https://www.cwgc.org/visit-us/find-cemeteries-memorials/ceme...
| billforsternz wrote:
| My dad served in the Merchant Navy in WWII and narrowly
| escaped death more than once. I don't recall the details
| because I was too self absorbed as a young man to pay
| sufficient attention to his stories. Which astonishes and
| shames me now, nearly 40 years after his death.
| benbristow wrote:
| Battleships: Hardcore Mode
| anymouse123456 wrote:
| Would love to learn more, but hard pass on scrolljacking sites.
| bane wrote:
| If there was ever a map that showed the global scale of the war,
| this is the one if you consider how much of the Earth is Ocean.
|
| Clicking through the years also shows very clearly the tides
| turning, the war contracting around the axis powers, and the
| amount of absolutely destruction.
| bloopernova wrote:
| If you're interested in how some of the wrecks got in Ironbottom
| Sound, read _Neptune 's Inferno_ by James Hornfischer.
|
| Then read _The Last Stand of The Tin Can Sailors_ by the same
| author. Because it 's an amazing book about some astonishing
| bravery in the face of overwhelming odds.
| mkapoor26 wrote:
| Some didn't liked the site but I liked it, don't know seems
| impressive. Btw, the name is really a coincidence. like paul
| heersink (here sink) man finding the ships that sank. Found this
| video of him on YouTube guess he helped in mapping cache maps.
| Video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oxT9Ud834Y Transcript:
| https://yttranscripttool.com/transcription?video_url=https%3...
| abbbi wrote:
| this site rocks wtf, your completely drawn into a nice story.
| Never had such an urge to dig deeper since a long time i opened a
| site.
| piqufoh wrote:
| > But by 1943, the tides had turned in their favor.
|
| > There is a clear inflection point around March 1943: From this
| point onward, the Allied forces sank more ships every month than
| they lost.
|
| Any idea what what happened early 1943? Was there a specific
| event that changed the direction, or is the balance point of slow
| attrition?
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Things went pretty badly for the Allies for the first few year,
| then:
|
| Battle of Midway - June 1942
|
| Allied Victory at El Alamein - November 1942
|
| German surrender at Stalingrad - February 1943
|
| It was all downhill for the Axis powers after that.
| bloopernova wrote:
| I would add to an already great list:
|
| Guadalcanal - August 1942 onwards. The Japanese were turned
| back here, both their army and navy.
| bjornlouser wrote:
| https://www.history.navy.mil/about-us/leadership/director/di...
| nathancahill wrote:
| 4-rotor Enigma was broken in Dec 1942.
| dbreunig wrote:
| If you look at the Pacific Theater, the inflection point is
| later, really amping up in late 1943.
|
| I'd imagine a one contributing factor is fixing the
| ridiculously buggy Mark 14 torpedo, which cleared up right
| about that time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_14_torpedo
|
| Here's a great video on it:
| https://youtu.be/eQ5Ru7Zu_1I?si=_1ujGsLQumraKz1Q
| diegof79 wrote:
| Colossus the computer created to crack Enigma was released in
| 1943, that's probably the cause:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer
| diegof79 wrote:
| Slight correction: according to Wikipedia, Colossus was based
| on the machine used to crack Enigma:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombe
|
| However, the timeframe matched, so around 1943, the Allies
| could decipher messages that allowed them to anticipate
| German naval movements.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| More a factor against Germany AFAIU. Japan relied on code
| books, not crytographic mechanisms.
|
| Japanese Empirical codes were cracked dating to the beginning
| of the war AFAIU, or at the very least 1942.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| The linked page is very impressive, as is the work that must have
| gone into the database.
|
| I once scuba dived on SS Thistlegorm, which was sunk by German
| aircraft while waiting to enter the Suez canal. It was quite
| eerie to see the trains and other vehicles still onboard.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Thistlegorm
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