A Good Read,
Good story on the West Lock disaster.
This is the story of the explosions in the Navy fleet in Hawaii during WWII.
Copy the link below and paste it into your browser.
http://www.emmitsburg.net/archive_list/articles/history/ww2/stories/west_lock.htm
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Famous Navy Quotes: Who Said Them…and When
“I have not yet begun to fight!”
Captain John Paul Jones, said this during the famous battle between Bonhomme Richard and
Serapis on 23 September 1779. It seems that some of Jones’s men cried for surrender. Captain Richard
Pearson of Serapis asked Jones if he had surrendered. Jones then uttered the immortal words.
“It follows than as certain as that night succeeds the day, that without a decisive naval force we can do
nothing definitive, and with it, everything honorable and glorious.”
President George Washington, 15 November 1781, to Marquis de Lafayette.
“A good Navy is not a provocation to war. It is the surest guaranty of peace.”
President Theodore Roosevelt, 2 December 1902, second annual message to Congress.
‘Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!”
Lieutenant Howell Maurice Forgy, USN, Chaplain Corps, serving in the heavy cruiser
USS New Orleans (CA-32) during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, is credited with coining the phrase. Lieutenant Forgy saw the men of an ammunition party tiring as they labored to bring shells to the antiaircraft guns. Barred by his non-combatant status from actively participating in keeping the guns firing, Lieutenant Forgy decided that he could add his moral support to the ammunition
bearers through words of encouragement, and so patted the men on the back and said, “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!”
“Sighted Sub, Sank Same”
Message sent by an enlisted pilot, AMM 1/c Donald Francis Mason, on 28 January 1942.
Mason believed that he had sunk a German U-boat off Argentia, Newfoundland.
“Take her down!”
Commander Howard Walter Gilmore, desperately wounded and unable to climb back into his
submarine, USS Growler (SS-215), in the face of an approaching Japanese gunboat 7 February 1943.
“ I can imagine no more rewarding a career. And any man who may be asked in this century what
he did to make his life worthwhile, I think can respond with a good deal of pride and satisfaction:
‘I served in the United States Navy.’”
President John F. Kennedy, 1 August 1963, in Bancroft Hall at the U.S. Naval Academy.