Where would YOU serve in WW2?

Commander aboard a StuGIV with the Waffen SS. Just call me Pzjgr!

 

Hey Pzjgr, those 8" cruiser shells inbound on your tank in Normandy come with heartfelt love and kisses. Just call me a delivery boy!

 

That's cheating. Meet me to

 

I don't think I ever chimed in on this thread. If given my choice I would have been served on the same type of ship I did my actual service on. So I guess I would have been an electrician on a carrier somewhere in the Pacific.

 

Bill, I was on a carrier in the Pacific as an electrician for a while myself. (CVN-70 1981-1984) When and where did your serve?

 

Small world! I was on the 'Prize across the pier in Alamedia from the "Chuck," as we refered to the Vinson, from 1981 to 1985 as a nuc electrician.

 

We called it the "Chuck" too. Sometimes the "Up Chuck". Will have to compare notes sometime.

 

Oh good lord!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Different time frame but I was literally right across the pier from "the Chuckie V" as we called it. I was an electrician on the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72)(aka the Stinkin Lincoln or the Bad Luck Lincoln) from 1992-1995. I wasn't a part of the "glo worm" crew however I was just a plain old conventional "wire biter".

 

I went to visit the USS Lexington at Corpus Christi yesterday. I was a bit dissapointed as they had 80+% of it blocked off but it had lots of aircraft on display and I was surprised how cramped the spaces were. I am 6'1" and after hitting my head several times I started walking sloched over. I guess people were shorter back then.

 

After being on the Nimitz class carrier I think all of the old ships would seem small. At 6'3" I was always brushing my head as it was. When we went into the shipyard and we had to wear hard hats I kept smacking my head.

I went on the Alabama a few years ago. What really got to me was the engine room. They were using a 900# boiler plant and their ventillation was a couple of 6 inch ducts. I cannot imagine it.

 

I have a friend who is ex-Royal Navy, and has lungs full of asbestos dust....because in "the Good Old Days" they used to send 'volunteers' into the boilers to scrape all the crap off the insides during refit.
Health and Safety at Work Act, anyone?!

 

It is truely amazing what we used to do before we knew how bad it was for us. One of the reasons I steer clear of new products for a while.

 

Big....While I was flying back into Oakland from Chicago in '95, we came in over the bay and from left to right sat the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72), USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) and the USS Hornet (CV-12). Talk about a disparity in size. Two mordern Nimitz class carriers sitting next to a World War II Essex class. The Hornet was easily 200-250ft shorter in length, and a displacement that was 1/3rd that of the Nimitz class.

 

Bigice and Bill, you might enjoy this irreverent web site put together by an ex-Enterprise nuc. It is full of sea stories from the snipe point of view.

unofficial Enterpirse Reactor and Engineering web site

 

Procuring Hollywood "Starlets" for actors with differments, and making "Movies" of Heroic & Patriotic natures to boost morale., or piloting an F6F.

 

TA thanks for the link. I don't know how I spent almost a week before I saw it. I will have to check it out after my vacation.

 

Bill, that must have been some sight seeing the old carrier with the new ones. They really are huge. We sat in a dry dock in Newport News next to a fairly large cruise ship and it was dainty!

 

Isn't that the truth Big. To think that the Essex class Hornet was one of the bigger warships of its day and to see it dwarfed by the modern Nimitz class warships of today makes me certainly happy to have served now rather than back then.

 

PzJgr...You mean a JadgPanzer IV (with "Panther" gun and good slope/armor), or the stop-gap measure Stug IV? (L-48) Long 75 (same old) Stug atop a Pzkw IV chassis, 8 bogies instead of 6 per side?
Not a whole lot of them were produced, I could dig out the exact numbers, but I would guess...I looked it up, 632 built from mid 43 onwards to supplement Stug III production.

 

should read Jagdpathher with 8.8cm gun, the jagdpanzer IV had the short and then the L70 7.5cm long rod