Worlds oldest man dies at 113 years old

[Bill Hollinger]

World’s oldest man dies at age 113 - Europe- msnbc.com

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[jon_norstog]

Bill,

Mr. Allingham was also the last survivor of the the Battle of Jutland, one of history's greAT sea fights. he was on some kind of tender, taking care of airplanes. Who was to know at that time, what naval air power would do in the next big war. AllinghAM was the man of the future.

Jutland was kind of the last gasp of the battleship admirals. The BBs weren't able to take each other out for various reasons. The cruisers really suffered - the Brits lost six of them - many of them blowing into pieces and sinking with all hands.

Allingham was also the last surviving member of the founding of the RAF. He was, I think, one of these "witness to history" guys, who are in the right place at the right time, and just do their work and try not to get killed.

RIP

jn

[John Kepler]

Those were battlecruisers, not cruisers...and were, to quote their most vocal promoter, Adm. Jackie Fisher, "Egg-shells armed with sledgehammers!" that unfortunately tended to suffer from chronic "mission-creep"! Battlecruisers as a group didn't have what one would call a steller battle record...here are some highlights:

HMS Indefatigable-Blown up and sunk at Jutland, no survivors
HMS Queen Mary-Blown up and sunk at Jutland, IIRC 7 survivors
HMS Lion-Pounded into a wreck at Jutland taking over a year to repair, 99 men KIA, 53 WIA
HMS Tiger-Pounded into a wreck at Jutland requiring 14 month to repair, 24 KIA, 33 WIA
SMS Sedlitz-Pounded into a wreck at Jutland requiring 2 years to repair,98 KIA, 55WIA
SMS Lutzow-Sunk at Jutland, with the loss of most of the crew of 1100
SMS Derfflinger-Pounded into a wreck at Jutland requiring over a year to repair, 157 KIA, 26 WIA
-------
HMS Hood-Blown up, Battle of Denmark Strait, 1415 KIA (3 survivors)
HMS Repulse-Sunk by aircraft in 20 minutes, 327 KIA
IJNS Hiei-Pounded into a wreck by USS San Francisco and USS Portland, sunk by aircraft from MAS Henderson Field, 950 KIA (est)
IJNS Kirishima-Pounded into a wreck in 10 minutes by USS Washington sinking the next day, 1250 KIA (est)
IJNS Kongo (built in Britain, essentially a "Lion"-class battlecruiser)-Blown up by single torpedo hit from USS Sealion, 1250 KIA (est).

[John Sukey (Deceased)]

So that leaves two survivors. One British and one American.

WW2 started 70 years ago

Korea 59 years ago

Even Vietnam vets are passing away.

[John Kepler]

So that leaves two survivors. One British and one American.

The American is Frank W. "Bucky" Buckles, 108. He remains an active part of the VFW, and has taken a special interest in the returning Gulf War-Iraq-Afghanistan vets. My son met him last year, and Bucky is his "hero"!

[Ken C.]

The man who watched us go "from the outhouse to outer space" and then back to the outhouse again probably died of shame after seeing the posters in the other thread (OK Where did the topics go) getting chastised for expressing their opinion about Walter Crankcase. As usual, Ken showed up too late to express an opinion there, but mine would have been the same as the others. I dont think John K. said anything to deserve an infraction notice either, but that is just my opinion.

[Bill Hollinger]

Ken, if you have something to say then say it. Don't pull some behind the door cheap shot. I have never seen such childish people in my life and I deal with some pretty childish people!

[jon_norstog]

Those were battlecruisers, not cruisers...and were, to quote their most vocal promoter, Adm. Jackie Fisher, "Egg-shells armed with sledgehammers!" that unfortunately tended to suffer from chronic "mission-creep"! Battlecruisers as a group didn't have what one would call a steller battle record...

John,

I think you pretty much got it right WRT battlecruisers. The British lost 3 of them in less than an hour the first day of the Jutland fight. They were taken out by 11-12" shells from German cruiser-class ships. The Brits also lost 3 "armored cruisers." Some of the damage to German ships can be attributed to 15" shells from BBs that arrived early .. the Malaya and Barham of the 5th squadron. The Germans had a tactical advantage in visibility and got in 3X as many hits as the British in that first hour. It was smart seamanship and luck that kept the High Seas Fleet from being wiped out, and allowed it to escape destruction the next day.

Back to cruisers. The British battle cruisers were 10-year old designs, and the Germans had been busy working out their tactics,gunnery and armament for cruiser actions. The Germans had a plan for that fight. Anyway, after the war, the Washington treaty gave everyone a breather. "Treaty cruisers." My own thought is that the problem the battlecruisers addressed - how to integrate a heavy gun platform into a fast, light task force - was finally solved by the fast battleships, like the Iowa class ships in the US Navy.

The world was changing, anyway. At Samar, in 1944, the capital ships of the Japanese Navy were essentially defeated by a few tin cans, DEs and planes from escort carriers. the heaviest shell fired by the Americans in that fight was from 5" guns.

As for Jutland, it is one of those battles that people are still fighting over. My own thought is that it was a British strategic victory, in spite of the one-sided losses. A sea fight is different from a battle on land. Those poor devils didn't stand a chance. When a ship goes down as fast as the Indefatigable, Invincible and the Queen Mary did, practically everyone dies. that's just the way it is.

jn

[John Kepler]

I think that in every case you mentioned, and several that I did...the vessels were being used inappropriately for their design, which brings the subject immediately to the issue of the wisdom of the entire concept. In every case of a battlecruiser getting a lot of good seamen killed...it was engaged in a battle it simply couldn't win due to terrible cases of "mission creep"...based in large measure by the illusion that NOTHING that big could possibly be that vulnerable!

The part that I have always found interesting was how the US Navy recognized the "flawed logic" of the battlecruiser concept (even though, if you think about it, it's a concept we invented back in the early days of the Republic with the "Constitution-class Super-Frigates"), and largely rejected it (we eventually and reluctantly started a pair of them....enthusiastically dumped them in the Washington Naval Treaty and turned the hulls into the CV's Lexington and Saratoga), concentrating instead on development of a truly fast battleship...the Iowa's.

In closing, I think one of the things that gets lost in the historical shuffle is the massively important work that the US Navy Bureau of Ordnance did between the wars on a shoe-string budget. The US Navy entered WWII with unquestionable the best suite of Naval guns on the planet, developed by BuOrd and it's contract partners. The 5"/38 dual-purpose was the standard nobody else matched. The 6"/47 our Light Cruisers carried was a reliable, fast-firing, "gnat's eyelash" accurate, high-velocity gun that was disproportionately effective "on target" due to it's concentration on the "V" of the old Newtonian equation, F=1/2MV2. And with 15 of them on a Brooklyn-class, these were ton-for-ton some of the most potent vessels the US Navy ever built. The 8"/55's on the "Treaty-class" Heavies, culminating with the Baltimore-class was also as disproportionately effective. One last point to stress is not only the effectiveness of the US Navy guns, but their reliability...I have never read of any extensive malfunctions of US Naval armament in combat, while finding numerous cites for malfunctioning guns in others (British, German, some Japanese). Apparently, our Naval guns were like the Energizer Bunny, and some of the round-counts these vessels fired in combat were staggering (USS Portland, USS Helena; Naval Battle of Guadalcanal).

[Ken C.]

Strange, I had something to say and I thought I did say it. Since the other thread was locked before I could express an opinion there, I said it in this one. Sorry if you call that a back door shot, and also sorry if it offended anyone. Although there are people I look up to and admire, Cronkite wasnt one of them.