[HN Gopher] Mapping 20k ships that sank during WW II
___________________________________________________________________
Mapping 20k ships that sank during WW II
Author : ohjeez
Score : 432 points
Date : 2024-09-03 15:38 UTC (4 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.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| It works quite poorly on my e-ink tablet as well.
|
| And on desktop I'd not realised how much of the site was
| disabled under my default uMatrix configuration.
|
| I know about "Snowfall" and other infographics. I'd much
| prefer straight text and static visualisations to the maximum
| extent possible.
| 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...
| rjsw wrote:
| The German ships sunk in Scapa Flow [1] are a good source
| of steel as they are not war graves.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scuttling_of_the_German_f
| leet_...
| 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.
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| By your logic, any random long-urbanized space on Earth
| should remain untouched because at some point it was the site
| of people's (often violent) deaths. These ships weren't
| memorial vessels, they were just ships doing work and there's
| nothing wrong with salvaging them. Cemeteries are a different
| story. They represent places where people specifically chose
| to bury their dead for the sake of memorializing them.
| dehugger wrote:
| I think you replied to the wrong comment.
| 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?
| pimlottc wrote:
| "Startup" implies VC funding and a resultant "go big or go
| home" strategy.
| 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.
| pfdietz wrote:
| There is another kind of wreck used for extreme low background
| physics experiments. These experiments (put deep underground)
| need even lower background than medical equipment. They use
| lead for shielding, but any modern lead is contaminated with
| Pb-210, an isotope with a half life of 22 years. This
| contamination comes from the radioactive decay of uranium in
| the lead ore.
|
| These experiments have come to use lead that's been underwater,
| in wrecks, for centuries, so almost all the Pb-210 has decayed
| away.
| 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.
| lostlogin wrote:
| A less charitable view of the strategy is that the west
| is letting Ukraine bleed out defending itself with too
| little support to win, and too much to lose.
| petre wrote:
| The current war situation is quite convenient for the US.
| They watch the Russians screw themselves up in Ukraine
| while mostly supplying it with aging weapons that were
| mostly sitting around close to being decomissioned. O
| handy way to get rid of old inventory and also to push
| Eastern European NATO members to update their stuff:
| donate your USSR-made scrap to Ukraine and we'll
| give/sell you more modern NATO compatible equivalents.
| Putin was dumb enough to start a war and enable this. And
| this time the US reacted with more than just sanctions.
| aguaviva wrote:
| Things may very well work out that way for the arms
| industry.
|
| But it's not just like US policy in Ukraine is just a big
| sham to get these countries to buy modern weapon systems,
| if that's what you're insinuating.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| "The US" isn't doing that. Democrats are trying to defend
| our ally, and Republicans are trying not to. The net
| result is a rather incoherent US position, not a
| malicious one.
|
| Totally coincidentally, Republican media figures are
| being discovered to be essentially Russian stooges. It's
| very shocking, if you happened to ignore their constant
| purveyance of Russian propaganda.
| 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.
| lostlogin wrote:
| NATO has completely undermined itself by watching Russia
| attack its neighbours and responding so weakly. What's
| the point of a nuclear deterrent if your key strategy is
| going to be appeasement?
| petre wrote:
| Did you read up about MAD and how computers evolved
| because the US was calculating what to nuke in the USSR
| in the event of a nuclear strike?
|
| The point of nuclear deterrent is to have it, not to use
| it. If one has too much of it they'll go bankrupt like
| the USSR. None and they'll get attacked or invaded.
| That's why nobody attacks North Korea and Iran mainly
| uses proxies to attack Israel.
| lostlogin wrote:
| That's a bit simplistic.
|
| Plenty of countries have no nuclear weapons and aren't
| attacked.
|
| The USSR didn't fall because it had too many nuclear
| weapons.
|
| Plenty of nuclear armed countries have been attacked or
| invaded.
| 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".
| petre wrote:
| Except China doesn't consider Taiwan another country and
| goes to lenghty efforts to prevent anyone else from doing
| just that.
| 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.
| outop wrote:
| Why should China be an exception?
| 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.
| coffeecantcode wrote:
| It can be said as well that war between China and the
| Philippines may break out even before that given their current
| encroachment on a number of strategically important shoals in
| the South China Sea.
|
| Things are escalating in a very scary direction between the two
| countries coast guards.
|
| That being said the Pacific has not changed in the last 80
| years and it will still be eerily similar to the naval
| escapades seen then - but I anticipate with far greater loss of
| life despite autonomous capabilities (due to range of weapon
| effectiveness and lethality of munitions).
| 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.
| xpe wrote:
| I applaud such hobbies. Compare the time spent on it relative
| to, say, ingesting Netflix into your optic nerve.
| mkapoor26 wrote:
| Yeah, you're right I guess. Better than popping your eye
| watching cringe shows.
| mapsterman wrote:
| Going on 12 years now. If I had known it would have taken so
| long before I started I might not have taken this on. It's
| been a lot of work on my own time but it's something I enjoy.
| Why did I start? I thought it would be cool to see it all
| mapped and see the patterns that result, including the
| temporal ones. And I think I was right - it is cool. Also,
| aside from this forum there's been a huge interest in from
| folks involved with cleaning up potentially polluting wrecks
| and underwater cultural sites. Glad people are enjoying it
| and finding it worthwhile.
| 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.
| dugmartin wrote:
| And the crazy thing is they were denied access to the GI Bill
| after WW2 and didn't get veteran status until 60 years later.
| whartung wrote:
| > Of the U.S. services, the U.S. Merchant Marine had the
| highest casualty rate in WWII of 4%
|
| There was a Tom Hanks movie on Apple TV a couple years ago
| called "Greyhound", about a destroyer captain leading a
| convoy across the Atlantic in WWII.
|
| Just the very beginning, the banter about what they were
| about to encounter was pretty chilling.
| opo wrote:
| There were certainly groups in the services in WW II who
| suffered much higher casualties. For example, flying in a
| bomber crew was very dangerous. I can't quickly find some
| complete stats, but for example in 1943:
|
| >During 1943, only about 25% of Eighth Air Force bomber
| crewmen completed their 25-mission tours--the other 75% were
| killed, severely wounded, or captured.
|
| https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-
| Exhibits/Fact...
| outop wrote:
| But you're now talking about a much smaller group within
| the US Air Force. Obviously if you zoom in on any small
| unit of any force, you can find units with extremely high
| casualty rates.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| Posthumous Purple Heart awardees had a casualty rate of
| 100%!
| dredmorbius wrote:
| See my comment above. Total air crew and merchant-marine
| sailor contingents were likely _somewhat_ comparable.
|
| The US built ~35k bombers during WWII, generally with
| large crew sizes: 8 for the B-24 Liberator (18,118
| built), 10 for the B-17 Flying Fortress (12,731), 11 for
| the B-29 (3,970). That's ~35k aircraft, which would have
| required at _least_ 3,500 crew members, and probably a
| multiple of that (presuming several crews per aircraft to
| sustain multiple missions).
|
| That does make the bomber crew contingent itself smaller
| than the merchant marine, and air losses seemed to be
| concentrated among bomber crews, which were larger,
| slower, and generally more vulnerable than fighters or
| fighter-bombers.
| mulmen wrote:
| > presuming several crews per aircraft to sustain
| multiple missions
|
| Everything I have ever read suggests crews "owned" their
| bombers. This is how you see nose art.
|
| There weren't multiple crews per aircraft although
| sometimes crews would share planes if their aircraft was
| damaged and the other crew suffered casualties but that
| wasn't a daily thing. Certainly there weren't multiple
| crews per aircraft.
|
| Wikipedia says 350,000 Americans served in the 8th air
| force alone. That's larger than the 215,000 of the
| maritime service.
|
| Wiki says 3.4 million total in the Air force but most of
| that is not air crews. You need a literal army of
| mechanics, ground crews, and mission planners.
|
| I can't find numbers to answer the "most dangerous job"
| question but everyone suffered greatly.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighth_Air_Force (Defeat
| of the Luftwaffe)
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties#m
| ili...
| dredmorbius wrote:
| _Everything I have ever read suggests crews "owned" their
| bombers._
|
| If you could turn up any information either way, I'd be
| interested to see it.
|
| I can't find any clear statement. I'm familiar with nose
| art and pilot-specific names (e.g., "Bockscar", named
| after Captain Frederick C. Bock, which dropped the atomic
| bomb over Nagasaki). Wikipedia states that the practice
| varied by country and force, e.g., the US Army Air Forces
| permitted the practice, it was uncommon for the UK RAF
| and Royal Canadian Air Force, and the US Navy prohibited
| the practice.
|
| What nose art says about specific crew-aircraft
| assignments and their specificity or exclusivity isn't
| clear.
|
| Multiple sources note that crews would rotate out after
| 25 missions, though heavy casualties meant that both
| crews and aircraft faced challenges surviving that long.
|
| And I still find it implausible that aircraft would be
| idled between individual crew missions, though overhauls
| and repairs might well account for that.
| mulmen wrote:
| The book I am thinking of is A Higher Call.
|
| > What nose art says about specific crew-aircraft
| assignments and their specificity or exclusivity isn't
| clear.
|
| The B-17 was named "Ye Olde Pub". There's a chapter
| describing the crew meeting each other and naming their
| airplane. I don't recall any mention of another crew
| being involved. But I did get a strong sense of
| connection and ownership between the crew and plane.
|
| I believe after their return they fly another B-17 that
| lost much of its crew, maybe combining crews to fill in
| losses. It has been a while since I read the book.
|
| I don't recall ever reading anything to suggest B-17s
| were regularly flown by multiple crews.
|
| > And I still find it implausible that aircraft would be
| idled between individual crew missions, though overhauls
| and repairs might well account for that.
|
| Yes, I believe this is the case.
| mulmen wrote:
| The US Air Force didn't exist in WWII. 350,000 people
| served in the US Army's 8th Air Force.
|
| You can get a more detailed breakdown on Wikipedia:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties#m
| ili...
| outop wrote:
| Yes and the stat refers to bomber crews, not to all the
| people in that force.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Trying to back out numbers here ...
|
| I don't find a total size of the US Army Air Corps'
| European flight crew operations, but I do find a casualty
| count of 70,000
| (<https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/black-
| thursda...>). If that constitutes 75% of the total force
| size, then we come up with a total force size of 93,333.
| Let's call that 100,000.
|
| For the merchant marine:
|
| _During World War II, nearly 250,000 civilian merchant
| mariners served as part of the U.S. military and delivered
| supplies and armed forces personnel by ship to foreign
| countries engulfed in the war. Between 1939 and 1945, 9,521
| merchant mariners lost their lives -- a higher proportion
| than those killed than in any military branch, according to
| the National World War II Museum._
|
| <https://www.defense.gov/News/News-
| Stories/Article/Article/30...>
|
| The US Army Air Corps trained 435,000 pilots during WWII,
| with more trained by the US Navy and Marines.
|
| "WWII's Tragic Aviation Accidents", Warfare History Network
| (2018)
|
| <https://archive.is/718ZJ#selection-671.287-671.295>
|
| The US Navy reports 5,563,507 officers and 6,570 enlisted
| (totals are regular and reserve), presumably aviation, with
| 12,133 total fatalities, of which just under 30% were
| combat deaths. (The remainder were largely non-combat
| crashes.)
|
| <https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-
| reading...>
|
| (The total officers count seems suspiciously high, and I
| suspect is for the total Navy corps, rather than just
| flight operations.)
|
| And about 15,000 pilots died during training.
|
| <https://www.realclearhistory.com/articles/2019/02/12/stagg
| er...>
|
| This still doesn't break out _bomber_ crews relative to the
| overall US air operations, but at least for ballpark
| estimates, it seems that air crews and merchant sailor
| contingents were at the very least comparable in size, if
| not more air crews. That makes some sense as ships would be
| larger, fewer in number, and with a more efficient use of
| personnel (in terms of crew to net operations and tonnage
| delivered).
|
| Another triangulation: the US produced about 300k combat
| aircraft, and about 35,000 bombers, during WWII:
|
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_aircraft_produ
| ct...>
|
| (The story of industrial production and scale at which the
| US poured out materiel, whether ships, tanks, fighters,
| bombers, or what have you, during WWII, is worth its own
| discussion.)
| harimau777 wrote:
| I'm actually surprised the losses were so low. Obviously 4%
| is dramatically higher than your chance of death in other
| jobs but it's still quite low (e.g. when I'm playing X-COM I
| feel like the computer is cheating when I miss a 96% shot). I
| would have thought that in going to war, especially one as
| deadly as WW2, you'd at least have a double digit chance of
| dying.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Convoys improved survival rates... my grand-uncle was sunk
| 6 times in 1942/3 and fished out.
|
| The army's policy on leaving divisions on the line and
| replacing losses with replacements made those infantry jobs
| a death trap. 17% KIA is Europe.
| 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.
| jabl wrote:
| > For context, the contemporary commercial merchant fleet is
| about 80,000 ships
|
| Yes, though the contemporary fleet moves a lot more cargo than
| the WWII era fleet, as the ships are a lot bigger, somewhat
| faster, and thanks to containers and ro-ro ships cargo handling
| is a lot more efficient so the ships spend much less time in
| port unloading and loading.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Right.
|
| I did manage to address that in a follow-up comment, though
| after you'd pointed out the same:
|
| <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41472992>
| dkga wrote:
| Amazing! By the way, where do you get data on the number of
| merchant ships?
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Thanks for asking, as I seem to have misremembered (and
| inflated) my earlier source, and have pulled in fresh data.
|
| My source was the UN Trade & Development organisation's
| _Review of Maritime Transport 2014_ , which I'd looked up a
| ways back for an earlier essay.
|
| Turns out I'd misremembered the size of the shipping fleet as
| of 2014, it was 47,601 ships, not ~80k, though that makes my
| point on this thread all the more apropos. I suspect I'd
| turned up the ~80k figure (if I recall, slightly less than,
| in the 70--80k range) from that or another source, and
| current fleet size is somewhat above that, keep reading. It
| _should_ be remembered that _current_ ships tend to be far
| larger than those of WWII, with the 2014 fleet totalling 1.68
| million deadweight tonnes (DWT), or about 35 DWT on average.
| That 's ... still lower than I'd have thought, as, for
| example, a Maersk E-Class container ship weighs in at 158,200
| DWT,[2] and the largest oil tankers range up to 550,000
| DWT.[3] From my sources earlier in this thread, WWII ships
| tended closer to 10,000 DWT.
|
| The 47,601 ship number comes from summary line of the table
| on page 37 of the 2014 report, and applies to ships of 1,000+
| DWT:
|
| <https://unctad.org/system/files/official-
| document/rmt2014_en...>
|
| The UNTD's _Review_ has been updated, the latest edition is
| for 2023:
|
| <https://unctad.org/publication/review-maritime-
| transport-202...>
|
| Full report: <https://unctad.org/system/files/official-
| document/rmt2023_en...> (PDF) (English)
|
| From that:
|
| _In January 2023, global maritime trade was transported on
| board 105,493 vessels of 100 gross tons (GT) and above, with
| oil tankers, bulk carriers, and container ships accounting
| for 85 per cent of total capacity._
|
| (p. 29)
|
| ________________________________
|
| Notes:
|
| 1. "Shipping and Safety: The nuclear option" (2015) <https://
| web.archive.org/web/20230604211742/https://old.reddi...>
|
| 2. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-class_container_ship>
|
| 3. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_tanker>
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Update/correction:
|
| The source I'd relied on for the 80k ships figure actually
| reported 47k ships, as of 2014.
|
| The latest estimate, from the same source, is 105k ships of 100
| deadweight tonnes or greater.
|
| UN Trade & Development (UNCTAD) _Review of Maritime Transport_
| , 2014 and 2023.
|
| See: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41472992>.
|
| (And thanks to dkga for asking me to cite sources and review my
| previous research.)
| 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.
| phist_mcgee wrote:
| I just finished Tin Can Soldiers. It's an incredibly powerful
| book. Highly reccomend.
| 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.
| 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
| I thought the German subs used more sophisticated
| encryption and were more disciplined in operational
| procedure such that the subs were largely not decrypted by
| the Allies.
| 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.
| ianburrell wrote:
| May of 1943 was called Black May because so many U-Boats were
| sunk, 25% of the force.
|
| The reason was a bunch of technologies coming together. New
| weapons like Hedgehog and new tactics. More escorts and better
| ones. The Mid-Atlantic gap was closed by B-24s, there were more
| escort carriers.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > what happened early 1943
|
| Supposedly the better question is why it took so long for an
| allied victory. Britain's economic output was absolutely vast,
| and its colonies made it very powerful. Yet it still took the
| US industrial capacity coming online and a significant portion
| of the USSR's population dying before victory.
|
| This book discusses it at length, it's an interesting read.
| https://www.amazon.co.uk/Britains-War-Machine-Weapons-Resour...
| outop wrote:
| If you look at the graphs there is nothing like an 'inflection
| point' or qualitative change in the graph behaviour.
|
| The Allied line goes slowly down and the Axis line goes slowly
| up. At one point they cross, but there's nothing particularly
| significant about that crossing point. Nothing happened in the
| month that they crossed other than the two numbers were equal
| momentarily.
| jccooper wrote:
| It's a silly thing to say, because ship losses are largely
| driven by German submarines in the Atlantic and American
| submarines in the Pacific, which are about as disconnected as
| things get in WW2.
|
| You can see clear trends in the data in each of those theatres,
| both of which turn drastically in the Allies favor later in the
| war. The main driver for that is American war materiel
| production, but there's also plenty of decisions in strategy,
| tactics, and weapons systems that are entirely different.
| 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
| neutered_knot wrote:
| What was fascinating to me was that the first US commercial ship
| sunk by Germany was sunk on the south side of Australia! I found
| that by accident clicking around. Truly a world war, I suppose.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_City_of_Rayville
| defrost wrote:
| Also of interest are the two dots off the mid point of the west
| coast of Australia, one green for "non combatant merchant" one
| red for "armed warship".
|
| The reality is that the _heavily_ armed "merchant ship"
| Kormoran was a stealth convert by the German Navy and generally
| referred to as the German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran.
|
| The Kormoran was approached by the RAN warship HMAS Sydney for
| signaling and inspection, figuring that its game was up it
| unloaded everything it had fatally damaging the Sydney and
| taking on terminal shelling in the process.
|
| https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/encyclopedia/hmas_sydney
| dmix wrote:
| This site crashes ios chrome if you scroll too fast
| xpe wrote:
| Look at 1942. You'll see a large number of Allied ships were sunk
| in the Atlantic, not that far from the US coast. I'm not expert
| on WWII history, but I would not have expected that.
| stoltzmann wrote:
| It's from attacks by German submarines.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Happy_Time
| hilux wrote:
| Wow. It's my dream to dive these wrecks. I guess I'd better get
| on it.
| Simon_ORourke wrote:
| My pop's uncle was one of those Atlantic dots, he got off the SS
| Santore in 1942 after it stuck a mine coming out of Chesapeake
| Bay, and I remember growing up with his stories of how the
| merchant marine took greater casualties than any of the armed
| services.
| j-a-a-p wrote:
| Seeing 20,000 dots is humbling. My grandfather survived two dots
| on this map. It has settled as a profound family story.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| My uncle was on a small gunboat in the pacific, which was sunken
| by a single Japanese plane. They were on extended patrol,
| supposed to be observing and reporting from concealment.
|
| But bored sailors will do anything, and what they did was fire
| upon a small plane (missing it). Which turned and strafed them,
| sinking their little boat and leaving my uncle with shrapnel in
| his butt for the rest of his life.
|
| His tiny experience in a vast planet-wide panorama of violence.
| This mapping project is a heroic undertaking! My hat is off to
| the people involved.
| alex_suzuki wrote:
| Glad your uncle survived to tell the story!
| mapsterman wrote:
| Thanks for the shout-out!
| ayewo wrote:
| For a moment there, I thought you were the grand parent
| commenter's uncle :).
|
| Nice work on the mapping project, monsieur Paul Heersink.
| bloopernova wrote:
| Thank _you_ for doing this, the wreck map is amazing and
| humbling. This map makes it easier to follow some historic
| naval battles; things like being able to locate where the
| _Atlanta_ went down, so close to the runway on Guadalcanal
| that was the focus of so much fighting.
| mapsterman wrote:
| Thanks!
| kh_hk wrote:
| data > maps
| harimau777 wrote:
| It's surprising to me how few ships seem to sink out in the open
| ocean where it would be nearly impossible to ever recover or
| research their wrecks.
|
| Does anyone know to what degree modern ships tend to hug the
| coast on their trips? My understanding is that until relatively
| recently (maybe the last 500 years or so?) almost all sailing was
| coastal and it was mostly unheard of for anyone to venture out
| into open ocean. However, I don't know to what degree that's
| still the case. E.g. if a modern ship is traveling from from
| somewhere in Asia or Europe to South Africa do they plot a
| relatively direct route or do they tend to hug the coast?
| snypher wrote:
| Something like https://www.shipmap.org/ could help answer this,
| but without sounding too trite, it probably depends on where
| the ship's destination is.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| That's a really great visualisation, BTW, thanks.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| That's mostly a function of which ports ships travelled
| between, various choke points (particularly straits and
| canals), and Great Circle routes.
|
| As an example, shipping traffic between Long Beach (Los
| Angeles, CA, USA) and Shanghai, China, doesn't head straight
| out into the Pacific, but hugs the west coast of North America,
| the southern coast of Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, and threads
| through the Japanese archipelago, not because today's container
| ships fear the open ocean and cannot navigate across it, but
| because _that is the shortest route_ , following a Great Circle
| from Los Angeles to Shanghai. Similarly, Atlantic traffic
| between New York and Britain travels significantly further
| north than one might expect.
|
| WWII saw little US-China traffic, but a great deal of US-UK
| traffic.
|
| Sea traffic _generally_ would have been concentrated along
| major supply routes. US-UK, as noted, Japan-Indonesia, and
| along the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts of Europe and North
| Africa. Venezuela was another major oil hub, and Japan was
| sourcing materials from occupied China and Indonesia.
|
| There's also logistics for attackers: it's militarily
| advantageous to strike within target-rich environments (where
| there's a lot of traffic), where the opponent cannot defend or
| strike back, where traffic tends to be concentrated (straits,
| islands, port mouths, around islands), within range of a home
| base or resupply network (the US's western Pacific operations
| are a solid indicator of just how robust the US logistics chain
| was, to permit operations over 8,000 mi (13,000 km) from West
| Coast ports), etc. Hanging out in mid-ocean waiting for the
| stray target to come into view makes little sense.
|
| Even today, many shipping lanes tend to follow or be shaped by
| coastlines, see for example:
|
| <https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/mapping-shipping-
| lanes-m...>
|
| That map doesn't do justice to the _tremendous_ traffic from
| China via Suez to Europe, or the massive amounts of South China
| Sea traffic, though at least the general routes are evident. It
| also cuts the US-China route in two by way of the map
| projection.
| RecycledEle wrote:
| German U-Boats sank many more ships in the Gulf of Mexico that
| was reported.
|
| The FDR administration lied about it then, and I see from the map
| in the article that they have never corrected those lies.
| samber wrote:
| we can even see the Normandy landing beaches (June 6, 1944)
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