Thread by @AliceAvizandum

oh god

https://twitter.com/cookiecyboid/status/1074864668169170944

okay so this is the Porter, named after a kind of buccaneering Union civil war commodore

it’s a destroyer, which means it’s small, fast, designed to
- escort convoys
- screen capital ships
- attack submarines
navies build a lot of them and in the US Navy of 1942 they are an unprestigious assignment. this will be important later

like they’re not... cool. anti-submarine warfare and convoy escort are boring but somehow also dangerous, and there’s no prestige in it so nobody really wants to be there

also (although this was more of a British problem) notoriously poor sea-keeping, which means everyone’s sick and miserable all the time because the entire thing lurches over waves. this may also be important in evaluating the crew’s decision making

so let’s talk about all the times the officers and men of the USS William D Porter tried to murder President Franklin Roosevelt

Roosevelt is headed to the Tehran Conference. you know, this one. one that shapes the postwar world. it’s important

obviously you can’t just fly there and Roosevelt really likes boats, he was Secretary of the Navy once and he still has a thing for the service

and obviously you can’t just put the President of the United States on a battleship, what if it gets attacked. you need escorts. you need destroyers

first day, leaving Norfolk, Virginia, the Porter messes up a turn and shears all the equipment off the side of another destroyer, taking out a lifeboat and the crane for it

second day - again, the day after the last thing - the same ship accidentally drops a depth charge, which explodes, sending the entire already nervous convoy into panicked evasive manoeuvres

*the day after that* they try to kill Roosevelt

The president is aboard this big bastard, USS Iowa, still around as a museum ship, very cool, and he is as fascinated with naval stuff as ever, so they arrange some training for him to watch

they launch some balloons and Iowa’s anti-aircraft gunners shoot them down. all going well. next up, have the destroyers do a mock torpedo attack on the Iowa

well of course you’re going to laugh

so now there’s a live, armed mark 15 torpedo travelling towards the president at maybe 40-50mph?

wonder which ship fired that torpedo and is just now realising it 🤔

no big deal, it’s only carrying 825lbs of high explosive

so obviously you have to warn the Iowa. but there’s radio silence because you don’t want to tip anybody off about this huge important convoy. so you have to use morse code and a signal lamp

you can get morse out pretty quickly with one of these, if you’re not panicked because you just fired a bunch of high explosives at FDR. they are panicked

and again, this isn’t a job you get if you’re at all ambitious

so of course they fuck up the message and Iowa is like, what. takes a bit longer to resend UM HEY GUYS WE FIRED A TORPEDO AT YOU

Iowa does about the sharpest turn in its service. Roosevelt, who is an insane person, has the Secret Service wheel him out on deck so he can see the torpedo coming

it somehow misses and lets off a gigantic explosion in the wake behind Iowa

Iowa turns all of its guns on the USS William D Porter because why wouldn’t you. a broadside from Iowa looks like this

so the destroyer gets fired from FDR duty and ordered to Bermuda, where the poor dumb kid who armed the torpedo is Extremely arrested

Roosevelt later intervened on his behalf, because, again, insane

They then send the destroyer somewhere it can do the least damage, the Aleutian Islands, where it manages to accidentally shell the base commander’s front yard, again with no injuries

Finally it fights in the open Pacific, taking part in the invasion of Okinawa, where it becomes the first, last and only ship to sink because of a kamikaze attack that misses

The plane lands in the water and somehow explodes *underneath* it, ending an extremely weird and stupid career. No ship of the US Navy has been named after William D Porter since