3 Feb 2021 Garand Picture of the Day

[Mark in Rochester]

Hugging the ground while bullets sing.

Leyte Island, P.I. ... Yankee invaders bellyflop into the sands of Leyte island's beaches. After rushing ashore from the landing barges of coast guard-manned invasion transport at the height of the beachhead battle in the central Phillippines. Jap snipers and machine gunners poured it at the invaders as they hit the shore. In the background, a pair of LSM'S have just been strafed 11-13-44



LSM-21 Class Landing Ship Medium:
Laid down, 24 April 1944, at Brown Shipbuilding Co., Houston, TX.
Launched, 14 May 1944
Commissioned USS LSM-21, 19 June 1944, LT. Clarence L. Crayne, USN in command
During World War II USS LSM-21 was assigned to the Asiatic-Pacific Theater and participated in the following campaigns:

Asiatic-Pacific Campaign


Leyte landings, 13 October to 29 November 1944
Ormoc Bay landings, 7 to 8 December 1944 Consolidation of the Southern Philippines;
Mindanao Island landings, 10 March 1945, 17 to 23 April 1945, 3 May 1945

Mindoro landings, 12 to 18 December 1944
Lingayen Gulf landing, 16 to 18 January 1945

Balikpapan operation, 26 June to 6 July 1945
Manila Bay-Bicol operations;
Mariveles-Corregidor, 14 to 28 February 1945

Following World War II USS LSM-21 was assigned to Occupation service in the Far East from 9 September to 16 November 1945
Decommissioned, 23 March 1946, at San Diego, CA.
Struck from the Naval Register, 12 April 1946
USS LSM-21 earned five battle stars for World War II service
Final Disposition, sold for scrapping, 21 December 1946, to National Metal & Steel Corp., Terminal Island, San Pedro, CA.

Information

Warning: This is a relatively older thread This discussion is older than 360 days. Some information contained in it may no longer be current.

[Flying10uk]

An almost new landing ship sold for scrap after less than 2 years of active service. Surprising that an alternative solution couldn't be found.

[Bob Womack]

In an effort to save time in the rapid build-up of materiel for the war, short-cuts were taken. One was slipping the step of "pickling" the steel that some ships were made of. This leaves the "mill scale, impurities," in place on the surface of the metal. I am aware that at least the ships in size from the DE (destroyer escort) downwards were built of un-pickled steel, meaning that they were rusting from the moment they were assembled and were never meant to last very long. Remedial steps were taken through the war to keep them going but there were always areas you couldn't reach. To learn more, read Little Ship, Big War: The Saga of DE-343, by Edward P. Stafford. DE-343 was the USS William Warner Abercrombie, named after a pilot in VT-8 embarked in the USS Hornet, who died in the battle of Midway. She was one of those ships built of un-pickled steel. All of the ships from her class that survived the war were either sold for scrap or used as targets.





Bob

[RASelkirk]

An almost new landing ship sold for scrap after less than 2 years of active service. Surprising that an alternative solution couldn't be found.

Wish someone would post up pix of the perfectly operational "gear" being scuttled or otherwise scraped overboard on the way home. I've seen pix of this over the years but never kept any...

Russ

[Flying10uk]

Wish someone would post up pix of the perfectly operational "gear" being scuttled or otherwise scraped overboard on the way home. I've seen pix of this over the years but never kept any...

Somewhere I had a photograph in an old magazine of the US Airforce "blowing up" up a perfectly good aeroplane, just after the end of WW2, as being the most cost effective way of disposing of it rather than flying it back to the US from Europe.

[Mark in Rochester]

Wish someone would post up pix of the perfectly operational "gear" being scuttled or otherwise scraped overboard on the way home. I've seen pix of this over the years but never kept any...

Russ

After the bomb, my father's ship (AKA 3) dumped the whole cargo load into the jungle and bulldozed the mess flat.





Million Dollar Point site where the US army dumped expensive equipment after WW2 pictured | Daily Mail Online

[browningautorifle]

One of the pics in the link is this of a troop learning antiaircraft drills with a shotgun mounted in a turret. This would be a Savage auto? No forestock and there's a box of 12 ga ammo by the coach... never have I seen this portrayal before...

[Bob Seijas]

What could be more illustrative than the demil program in which the government PAID to have M1s destroyed versus selling them and MAKING money? That's not just stupid, that's criminal.

[Ex Crab]

Some time about 2000 I bought a Springfield M1903 A3 from a dealer in Britain, it had been made up from spares left by the US Army after WWII. The US had shipped tons of spares for M1s and Springfields, enough to make complete weapons. After the war it was just not worth shipping back to the US, so everything was just left in bunkers somewhere and forgotten.
Does anyone just happen to have a spare time machine they could loan me?

[Bill Hollinger]

The alternative is bringing back all that and flooding the market with surplus equipment which has a negative effect on the economy. I don't like it anymore that anyone else but every piece of surplus equipment brought back and sold on the market is an item not manufactured for sale on the market to generate a strong healthy economy.

Again, there is nothing more I'd love than to have all that equipment available for collecting.