Quote:
Originally Posted by grislyatoms
Approaching ports (Iwo, Chichi?, and Haha? Jima for example) at night I have seen ships at dock. Drop periscope to plan attack, raise periscope again and...
fires on the beach, ships sunk at their moorings. Space of a few minutes.
Always puzzled over that.
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This is one of the reasons behind the creation of Combined Ops during WWII - I can't remember the actual name of the operation, but it's the one they made the film "Cockleshell Heroes" from [I'm going to look it up as soon as I finish typing, but for some reason I can't bring myself to do it in the middle of a post - strange...]
Anyway, the marines sent people upriver in kayaks to attack ships in harbour, and SOE had a team on the ground who were going to attack them by sneaking aboard and planting explosives. After the marines attacked - with limited results, security was ramped up to a level that made the SOE plan unworkable. Combined Ops came about because of the obvious need to coordinate the allocation of targets. neither group was aware the other had been tasked, and ironically, if the marines had asked SOE to help them exfiltrate their people, then SOE might have told them there was no need to even send them........
Anyway, it looks like your targets got hit by a spec. ops team....
I have no idea how what you saw
really came about, but that's what it looks like
