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John Currin

15 years in Royal New Zealand Navy

Abercrombie-class monitor HMS Havelock

HMS Havelock at the T.W. Wards Shipbreakers at Preston, 1927

HMS Havelock 1915

HMS Havelock was an Abercrombie-class monitor of the Royal Navy that saw service in the First World War.

Background[edit]

On 3 November 1914, Charles M. Schwab of Bethlehem Steel offered Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, the use of four 14 in (356 mm)/45cal BL MK II twin gun turrets, originally destined for the Greek ship Salamis. These turrets could not be delivered to the German builders, due to the British naval blockade. The Royal Navy immediately designed a class of monitors, designed for shore bombardment, to use the turrets.

HMS Havelock was laid down at the Harland and Wolff Ltd shipyard at Belfast on 12 December 1914. The ship was named General Grant in honour of the United States General Ulysses S Grant, however as the United States was still neutral, the ship was hurriedly renamed HMS M2 on 31 May 1915. She was then named HMS Havelock on 20 June 1915.

Service history[edit]

HMS Havelock sailed for the Dardanelles in June 1915. She remained in the Eastern Mediterranean until returning to England in January 1916. She then served as a guard ship at Lowestoft. She was decommissioned in May 1919, and disarmed in June 1920. Sold for breaking up in May 1921, she was retained in reserve until resold on 25 June 1927 to the Ward shipyard at Preston for breaking up.

Photos – USS Wisconsin after she collided with USS Eaton on May 6, 1956


The U.S. Navy destroyer USS Eaton (DDE-510) following collision with the battleship USS Wisconsin (BB-64). On 6 May 1956, off the Virginia Capes, Wisconsin collided with the Eaton in thick fog while steaming at high speed (20 knots). The collision caused serious damage to both ships, with the Eaton contacting the battleship’s bow on the starboard side forward of the bridge, which crushed to port side and broke the keel.

USS Curtis Wilbur (DDG-54) is the fourth Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer. Curtis Wilbur was named for Curtis D. Wilbur, forty-third Secretary of the Navy, who served under President Calvin Coolidge. In 2016 she was based at Yokosuka, Japan, as part of Destroyer Squadron 15.

Built by Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine, she was commissioned in Long Beach, California, on 19 March 1994. The keynote speaker for the ceremony was then-Secretary of the Navy, John H. Dalton.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Curtis_Wilbur_(DDG-54)

USS Oscar Austin (DDG-79) is an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer in the United States Navy. Oscar Austin is named for Medal of Honor and Purple Heart recipient Private First Class Oscar P. Austin.

This ship is the 29th destroyer of her class. USS Oscar Austin was the 17th ship of this class to be built by Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine, and construction began on 9 October 1997. She was launched and christened on 7 November 1998. On 19 August 2000 she was commissioned at Bath, Maine. As of July 2020 the ship is part of Destroyer Squadron 26 based out of Naval Station Norfolk.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Oscar_Austin

BOSTON (July 4, 2014) USS Constitution fires a 17-gun salute near U.S. Coast Guard Base Boston during the ship’s Independence Day underway demonstration in Boston Harbour.

BOSTON (July 4, 2014) USS Constitution fires a 17-gun salute near U.S. Coast Guard Base Boston during the ship’s Independence Day underway demonstration in Boston Harbor. Constitution got underway with more than 300 guests to celebrate America’s independence. (U.S. Navy photo by Seaman Matthew R. Fairchild/Released) 140704-N-OG138-866

USS Constitution fires a 17-gun salute.

Constitution got underway with more than 300 guests to celebrate America’s independence. (U.S. Navy photo by Seaman Matthew R. Fairchild/Released) 140704-N-OG138-866

USS PLUNGER/USS A-1


USS Plunger (SS-2) was one of the earliest submarines of the United States Navy. She was the lead boat of her class and was later renamed A-1 when she was designated an A-type submarine. She is not to be confused with the experimental submarine Plunger which was evaluated by the U.S. Navy from 1898 to 1900
Plunger was originally laid down on 21 May 1901 at Elizabethport, New Jersey, at Lewis Nixon’s Crescent Shipyard. Arthur Leopold Busch supervised the construction of the A-Class submarines built there. The prototype Fulton experimental craft was laid down at Isaac Rice’s Electric Boat Company prior to these first A-class submarines.

She was launched on 1 February 1902, and commissioned at the Holland Torpedo Boat Company yard at New Suffolk, New York on 19 September 1903.

Assigned to the Naval Torpedo Station at Newport, Rhode Island for experimental torpedo work, Plunger operated locally from that facility for the next two years, a period of time broken only by an overhaul at the Holland yard at New Suffolk from March–November 1904. Besides testing machinery, armament and tactics, the submarine torpedo boat also served as a training ship for the crews of new submersibles emerging from the builder’s yards.

In August 1905, Plunger underwent two weeks of upkeep before leaving the yard on 22 August. She was towed by the tug Apache to New York City, where Plunger conducted trials near the home of President Theodore Roosevelt. Upon the submarine’s arrival that afternoon, she moored alongside the tug and prepared for a visit from President Theodore Roosevelt.
Note 3rd CO name – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester_W.Nimitz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Plunger(SS-2)

USS HOUSTON 1934

After the test trip the Panama Canal passed and entered the Asiatic Fleet base in the Philippines , from which it left in 1932 to protect US interests threatened by the brief war between the Japanese Empire and China in January. At the beginning of 1934 he returned to Pearl Harbor where he joined the Pacific Fleet , then in the summer he took President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on a cruise that ended in the Caribbean in Portland. The cruiser also served as a presidential ship, in detail in October 1935, in 1938 and again in January 1939 during a combined US navy exercise in the Atlantic Ocean ; in 1937 he also attended the inauguration of the Golden Gate Bridge . After extensive revisions lasted for much of 1939, he anchored in Pearl Harbor, from where he left at the end of 1940 to return to the Asiatic Fleet . On the morning of December 8, 1941, he escaped for a few hours to the devastating Japanese raids that struck the archipelago at the same time as the attack on Pearl Harbor . L ‘ Admiral Thomas Hart, commander in chief of the fleet, left the Philippines with all the ships and reached first Darwin in Australia , then joined the Anglo-Dutch forces that were preparing to fight the Japanese invasion convoys in the Dutch East Indies .

Damaged by an airstrike in January 1942, Houston only came into contact with Japanese warships on February 27 during the Battle of the Java Sea, which ended in disastrous results for the Allies . He received orders to fall back into the port of Tjilatjap on the southern coast of Java but was identified and sunk by numerous Japanese units on the night between 28 and 1 March; the approximately 370 survivors of the crew were almost all captured and lived a long imprisonment for the rest of the Second World War .
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Houston_(CA-30)

USS Guam was an Alaska-class large cruiser which served with the United States Navy during the last year of World War II.

USS Guam was an Alaska-class large cruiser which served with the United States Navy during the last year of World War II. She was the second and last ship of her class to be completed. The ship was the second vessel of the US Navy to be named after the island of Guam, an American territory in the Pacific, and she was assigned the hull number CB-2. Due to her commissioning late in the war, Guam saw relatively limited service during the war. She participated in operations off Okinawa in March–July 1945, including providing anti-aircraft defense for the carrier task force and conducting limited shore bombardment operations. She participated in sweeps for Japanese shipping in the East China and Yellow Seas in July–August 1945. After the end of the war, she assisted in the occupation of Korea and transported a contingent of US Army troops back to the United States. She was decommissioned in February 1947 and placed in reserve, where she remained until she was stricken in 1960 and sold for scrapping the following year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Guam_(CB-2)