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Research into the historical events surrounding the bombing of the U.S.S. Panay, December 12, 1937 on the Yangtze River near Nanking, China
'Concerning the Panay sinking--and other Related Matters'
November 5, 2000
Well, it's been awhile since my last post to my weblog here. I got sidetracked.
Over in deja, since my last log post, I've posted over sixty things, some just chit chat, but many outgrowths of this log. In fact, it was a continuance of this log.
Most of the posts were to the jfk.alt. assassination forum. My Panay research led me there. And I thought to stick around. (doggone Chennault!)
I feel posting that I'm between just being a pest, and some altruistic notion of doing something worthwhile.
I'm still trying to get the proportions right of the Panay story, and the events surrounding.
For someone who has never read, or heard, about the USS Panay the best thing I can recommend is the article in Naval History, February 2000. The article, and it's footnotes, will point you in the right direction. Even the cover is a source. It's a picture of the USS Tutuila at Chunking on the Yangtze. It too came under attack by the Japanese, but much after the Panay. And that's another story. All the gunboats have their own story!
And the very best source is Perry's introduction to his book The Panay Incident. In the introduction is where he found his material.
---
Over in deja I did a little post about abbreviations. And since, I've wondered about abbreviations.
A history, a story, is an abbreviation of the actual event, or events.
At the beginning of the weblog I told how I tried to make the four page booklet, to condense the story and get it right. Since, on the web, I find things like cachets, and the gumcard above (from ebay), and take note of how they briefly tell the story.
Some are right on, others, like the one above, have something off. Those are the wrong kind of Japanese planes I'm pretty sure. Bi-wings strafed the Panay, the Aichi D1As.
But the gumcard gets the history across--things dont have to be exactly right, they just have to be consistently self similar.
Scaled up to full size, the gumcard front and back matches Perry's Panay Incident. The only difference is in the elaboration.
What am I trying to say...they're proportional. Self similar in kind, though not in size.
---
Now, about how the Panay was built (where we left off!...).
I've actually had the opportunity to watch a video of a self similar construction--A Ship Called San Pablo. This is a short subject movie made by the producers of the movie The Sand Pebbles. It tells of how the San Pablo, the gunboat in the movie was made. It's great.
As for how the real Panay was built, that post is still in the works. For the curious, the sources are in the Naval History article--Feb 2000. That's what the article is about, the nuts and bolts of how the gunboats were built.
I'm trying to reach beyond it. And too, someday I'm going to find a library with back issues of Proceedings and I'll spend many days looking at the things in the article's footnotes!
To give an idea where I'm at now, I'm looking at the resignation of Secretary of the Navy Denby in 1924. This had to do with the Teapot Dome Scandal, and I think Denby was secretary of the Navy when approval for the gunboats was given.
In the article's footnote is sourced documents about the Panay's going through Congress--at least they look like they are that. But they're in those boxes...
I think what I may be after is if Chiang Kai Shek asked T. V. Soong to ask someone in Congress to build some first class gunboats to patrol the Yangtze and help the Nationalist take root.
Later, this is the way Chennault got involved, T. V. Soong came to American looking for planes and help to fight the Japanese, and its in my thoughts.
And it may well be some Americans proposed the gunboats for the purpose of policing the Yangtze not only for the safety of the Americans there, but too for Chiang Kai Shek.
----
Over in the deja jfk.alt.assissination forum is a thread about the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Oh, it's a tangle. And looking again at the Naval History Feb 2000 I see a letter to editor about the Gulf of Tonkin. It, and the earlier article it refers too, fit the thread on deja, and I'm thinking I should go over there and tell everyone!!
That's the way it happens!
---
I've referred to the Persian Gulf conflict as another Yangtze Patrol. It's self similar--our ships patrolling the Gulf is self similar to the gunboats patrolling on the Yangtze--not in size but in kind.
It doesn't take a genius to see this, and I'm sure the powers that be see it. What I'm not so sure of is how they react, and doubt if they have they're history right, and so toss things out here in the fantasy that in some roundabout way the Panay is in their considerations.
Personally, I dont think I can tell anyone how to do anything!
That's some ship that picked up the USS Cole. I'll have to study out those Norwegians!!
December 12, 1937 the first American ship to be bombed and sunk by enemy aircraft, USS Panay, 27 miles upstream from Nanking…
For a nice view of what the USS Panay looked like have a look at a site I found by modeler named Fred Heil—
http://www.warship.simplenet.com/OahuHeil.htm
(He uses Iron Shipwright’s Panay—they were sister gunboats).
And the Sand Pebbles website is worth a visit too…
http://www.execpc.com/~cgarcia/index2.html
ebay searchword USS Augusta brings up some album pictures being auctioned of the USS Augusta in Shanghai—Fall, 1937. One of crew is magnificent. And the one of the dance too. (Don’t often get to use that superlative!) Takes awhile to load. There’s a little one of the damage to the deck by a small shell.
http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=522116725
David
12/12/00
September 15, 2001
All the posts are over in the Google archive between when I left off and today.
I've come to miss trust the newsgroups. I'll try to organize the posts and archive them here in the site.
I hope I can trust Yahoo, here, and the web over all. Having said that, I might be biting the hand that provides this format. Anyway, just to get going again...
Searchword
America
There
are millions and millions of web sites, too many to make a conventional yellow
white telephone book pages either on line, or off in hard copy.
In
my web searches I'm pretty limited to what the web search engines present to me,
and what is presented to me, well, it's the material I build my thoughts and
posts from.
I
try not to fall prey to things, but the commercialization of the web means what
I see in the first few pages of a web search on a major search engine are things
that are not necessarily the best representation of what the search was looking
for.
If
on Google you search for Army Navy Marines you will get in the first slot THE
Army, Navy, Marines.
If
you search for America on Google, Yahoo Web Pages, AlltheWeb, Dogpile, it's not
quite the America I had in mind looking for tonight using searchword America.
Happily,
Searchword America on MSN had what I was looking for in the first slot where it
belongs-United States of America. (I
didn't try USA, or United States of America, it's not that they don't have
it...)
I
don't mind the search engines being commercial, but it's troubling, because in
some of my searches what's in the first slots, which are slots acquired somehow,
by money or influence, are, well, I don't know, wrong somehow.
Someday
there will be a bang up engine made by scholars, historians, and such,
uncommercial, unbiased, free. In
meantime I put up with this too.
David
Rainbow,
CA
9/16/01
I
was so happy to find the California site I sent off a thank you email to
Governor Davis!
For awhile, searchword Panay kicked out my site in Geocities, but last I looked Panay brough up a bunch of what look to be classroom projects that a teacher assigned suggesting students compare the Panay Incident with the sinking of the Japanese research vessel in Hawaii.
I dont know, I've been a crusader rabbit tilting at the windmills, and that would be amusing but the windmill was a real fire breathing dragon.
September 16, 2001
It doesn't happen often, but I'm always so pleased when someone responds to my posts in the newsgroups. I'll hang about there to maintain the few current.
From: [email protected] (David Sharpness) Newsgroups: soc.history.war.world-war-ii Subject: Re: HMS Peterel and USS Wake References: <[email protected]> <[email protected]> NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.68.229.35 Message-ID: <[email protected]> > > Strongly recommend "The Royal Navy and the Sino-Japanese Incident" > as a good view of the 1930-1941 period from the perspective of > the British Yangtze and Hong Kong squadrons. It's been on my list to find in the library.
(In fact it is in the first page of the weblog.) Oh, before I forget, USS Mindanao should be in the list. My favorite is The Panay Incident by Joseph B. Icenhower. (Has Panay Crew picture). My treasure the article in February 2000 magazine Naval History. One of the first I found My War with Japan by Carroll Alcott. And another treasure I Witness by Norman Alley. At present I even have Luigi Barzini The Italians from the library. In one of those document boxes up in Berkely are the letters of George Atcheson, and it lists an unfinished novel. Frank Roberts has an account in 1965 issue of Kansas. And the most remarkable thing I have is a xerox of an ariticle in Our Navy written shortly after the Panay Incident. It has the Panay Crew lists and the others who where there. This list is on the web at the Augusta site, but hard to read. I have these books and things my ownself (the old recruiting poster), or they are nearby in the library. Thanks! David Rainbow, CA 9/16/01
Here's the post that above is the latest part.
From:
[email protected] (David Sharpness)
Newsgroups:
soc.history.war.world-war-ii
Subject:
HMS Peterel and USS Wake
NNTP-Posting-Host:
209.68.229.175
Message-ID:
<[email protected]>
Regarding
the Idzumo and the HMS Peterel and USS Wake
Book
quote
The
two remaining non-Japanese men-of-war on the Whangpoo, the USS
Wake
and HMS Peterel*, were attacked y the Japanese before dawn at
4.00
a.m.-an hour or so after the attack on Pearl Harbor....
*The
misspelling of the correct name, Petrel, was originally a mistake
by
an Admiralty clerk. Over the years
it caused endless confusion
among
officials and, later, historians. But
the error, once made,
could
not, it seems, be corrected.
Secret
War in Shanghai
Bernard
Wasserstein
End
quote
The
gunboat Wake for awhile was called Guam.
I
collect Yangtze gunboat lore.
USS
Panay
Mission
For
the protection of American life and property in the Yangtze River
Valley
and its tributaries, and the furtherance of American good will
in
China.
(Bronze
plaque in the tiny wardroom...)
The
Panay Incident
Prelude
to Pearl Harbor
Hamilton
Darby Perry
The
United States and the Far Eastern Crisis of 1933-1938
Dorothy
Borg
Prelude
to Pearl Harbor
The
Air War in China
1937-1941
Ray
Wagner
Way
of A Fighter
Claire
Chennault
China
Pilot
Felix
Smith
The
Ragged Rugged Warriors
Martin
Caidin
China
and the Helping Hand 1937-1945
Arthur
N. Young
The
Yangtze Patrol
Kemp
Tolley
Yangtze
Skipper
Thomas
Woodroofe
Web
sites
Dudley
Knox Yangtze Patrol Museum
(magazine
and book Bibliography)
The
Sand Pebbles movie site (3 years on the web)
Crispin
Garcia
Searchwords
on Google, Google groups, Yahoo,
All the Web, Dogpile:
Panay,
USS Panay, Shanghai 1937, Nanking, Yangtze Patrol
USS
Panay, USS Oahu, USS Tutuila, USS Wake, USS Monocacy, USS Luzon
USS
Augusta
Prelude
to War UCLA (newsreel collection (over a thousand dollars for
set,
and I don't know if they sell individual tapes))
MELVYL
University of California Library catalog on line (search Panay,
Norman
Alley's Bombing of USS Panay)
Battle
of China
Frank
Capra film on video (part of Why We Fight Series)
American
Memory
Library
of Congress
David
Rainbow,
CA
9/12/01
And the answer:
In article <[email protected]>, David Sharpness <[email protected]> wrote: >Regarding the Idzumo and the HMS Peterel and USS Wake >The two remaining non-Japanese men-of-war on the Whangpoo, the USS >Wake and HMS Peterel*, were attacked y the Japanese before dawn at >4.00 a.m.-an hour or so after the attack on Pearl Harbor.... > >*The misspelling of the correct name, Petrel, was originally a mistake >by an Admiralty clerk. Over the years it caused endless confusion >among officials and, later, historians. But the error, once made, >could not, it seems, be corrected. Actually, _Peterel_ has been in use (with that spelling) by the RN for a long time: there was a _Peterel_ in service in the Napoleonic wars, at least one gunboat of that name in the 19th century - the 1926 river gunboat lost at Shanghai and most recently one of the bird-class patrol boats of the 1970s. The name may originally have been a mis-spelling, way back when (or the eponymous fowl may have had the extra 'e' when the first _Peterel_ went down the ways) - but the gunboat sunk by _Idzumo_ bore the old and honoured name of _Peterel_. _Peterel_ was in a very ugly position, being largely disarmed as a base ship by then: IIRC she only had her Lewis guns aboard, but she held boarding parties off long enough for all CBs to be destroyed before being sunk by shellfire from _Idzumo_ (herself British-built, by Armstrongs of course..) and destroyers (or scuttled - she was probably going by that time anyway). >I collect Yangtze gunboat lore. Strongly recommend "The Royal Navy and the Sino-Japanese Incident" as a good view of the 1930-1941 period from the perspective of the British Yangtze and Hong Kong squadrons. -- Andy Breen ~ Interplanetary Scintillation Research Group http://users.aber.ac.uk/azb/ "Time has stopped, says the Black Lion clock and eternity has begun" (Dylan Thomas)
I made the post to the three newsgroups, there was
this one response and over in jfk one--a question brought up
about the radio on the Panay.
Repost (my theys were ungrammatical...I'm a mess...) > > _Panay_ question: my recollection is that the book on the Nanking massacere > claimed that she was acting as a relay for KMT radio signals, thus a legitimate > target. Know anything about this either way? > > Bill B It had a radio. Oh, I've read this too, and it's just rumor. The Panay cremen state emphatically the attack was premeditated. If the radio Iris Chang says was the Japanese' reason, she's welcome to it. Later the Tutuila was the KMT's radio link to US at Chunking, but it wasn't hit for a long while during the heavy bombing and when damaged by a near miss shortly before Pearl Harbor, it was the Panay Incident all over. So sorry, the Japanese said. Remember the Tutuila! David Rainbow, CA
I double checked Kemp Tolley's account. I have it right.
And will quote a bit today from that later, maybe start off
a new page.
