A submarine deck, not a battleship: Nimitz takes the Pacific Fleet, 31 December 1941 (2 Viewers)

[TheIronDiaries]

31 December 1941, Pearl Harbor Submarine Base. The change of command ceremony for the Pacific Fleet was held on the deck of the submarine Grayling, because there was no battleship deck left to hold it on.

I put together a short documentary on the shakeup that put Nimitz in command, and on King rising above him the day before. Kimmel relieved, Pye holding the fleet in between, and then a submariner taking over a fleet whose battleships were sunk or burning.

The part that stayed with me is the choice of deck itself. It reads like an admission of how bad things were, and also like a statement about what the Navy still had left to fight with.

Video here:
View: https://youtu.be/QFStWx8xT2A

Happy to be corrected on any detail. Sources are in the description.

 

[GrauGeist]

My Uncle Fred served aboard the Grayling (SS-209), going aboard for her second patrol (March '42) assigned as the boat's steward and torpedoman.
He and a shipmate missed the boat when it had emergency orders to pull out of Freemantle in July '43, which saved their lives as the Grayling was lost on that patrol.

A fun fact: the Grayling was attacked by Midway based B-17s while surfaced on picket during the battle of Midway.
The B-17 crews reported sinking a Japanese cruiser, which sank literally in seconds. Fortunately, the Grayling's crash-dive drills paid off...