Battle of the Pips

The Battle of the Pips is the name given to an incident on 27 July 1943, part of the Aleutian campaign of World War II. In preparation for the attack on the island of Kiska planned for August 1943, the U.S. Navy formed Task Group 16.22 (TG 16.22) under command of Rear Admiral Griffin, centered on the battleships Mississippi and Idaho.

On 27 July, 80 mi (70 nmi; 130 km) west of Kiska, TG 16.22 began to pick up a series of unknown radar contacts. The order was given to open fire, and 518 14 in (360 mm) shells were fired from both battleships, but there were no hits.

Radar

Radar was still a new and unreliable technology at that time, and weather conditions around the Aleutians were characteristically bad, with the very poor visibility normal for the area. No Japanese warships were actually within 200 mi (170 nmi; 320 km). Author Brian Garfield surmises, based on analysis by modern Aleutian fishing-boat captains, that the pips were rafts of sooty or short-tailed shearwaters, species of migratory petrel that pass through the Aleutians in July every year.

gollark: It's a good feature.
gollark: They all implode.
gollark: PIAAC level 1 says> Most of the tasks at this level require the respondent to read relatively short digital or print continuous, non-continuous, or mixed texts to locate a single piece of information that is identical to or synonymous with the information given in the question or directive. Some tasks, such as those involving non-continuous texts, may require the respondent to enter personal information onto a document. Little, if any, competing information is present. Some tasks may require simple cycling through more than one piece of information. Knowledge and skill in recognizing basic vocabulary determining the meaning of sentences, and reading paragraphs of text is expected.and 4% of people score below that, apparently.
gollark: (the live site is broken inexplicably)
gollark: https://web.archive.org/web/20210731020018/https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp

See also

References

  • Stern, Robert C. US Battleships in Action Part 1. Vol. 1. Carrollton, Texas: Squadron/Signal Publications, Inc., 1980. 10-11.
  • Garfield, Brian (1969). The Thousand-Mile War: World War II in Alaska and the Aleutians. Fairbanks, Alaska, USA: University of Alaska Press. pp. 357–372. ISBN 0-912006-83-8.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.