USS Weehawken (CM-12) - World War II North Africa Operations

World War II North Africa Operations

On 6 October 1942, USS Weehawken moved to Bayonne, New Jersey, and, two days later, to Tompkinsville, New York. On the 10th, she departed the latter port for the Naval Mine Depot at Yorktown, Virginia. She arrived in Yorktown the following day and began drills and exercises in the lower Chesapeake Bay. The minelayer stood out of the Chesapeake Bay on 5 November, bound for New York, and arrived at Brooklyn, New York, the following day. A week later, she put to sea with Mine Division (MinDiv) 50 and a convoy headed for French Morocco.

The minelayer dropped anchor in Casablanca harbor on 1 December. She remained in port until the 27th when she left to lay a defensive minefield off Casablanca. Weehawken returned to port that evening and then repeated the procedure the following day. On New Year's Eve, the Luftwaffe ushered in 1943 by subjecting Casablanca and the ships assembled there to a night of intermittent air raids. Fortunately, Weehawken suffered no damage during those raids and during the encore performed the following evening. Between 6 and 10 January, she made a round-trip voyage to Gibraltar and back to deliver minelaying equipment. Upon her return, the warship remained at Casablanca until 20 January, when she sailed for New York.

Read more about this topic:  USS Weehawken (CM-12)

Famous quotes containing the words world, war, north, africa and/or operations:

    At most, the greatest persons are but great wens, and excrescences; men of wit and delightfull conversation, but as moales for ornament, except they be so incorporated into the body of the world that they contribute something to the sustentation of the whole.
    John Donne (c. 1572–1631)

    We hoped for a happy termination of this terrible war long before this; but God knows best, and has ruled otherwise.
    Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)

    The English were very backward to explore and settle the continent which they had stumbled upon. The French preceded them both in their attempts to colonize the continent of North America ... and in their first permanent settlement ... And the right of possession, naturally enough, was the one which England mainly respected and recognized in the case of Spain, of Portugal, and also of France, from the time of Henry VII.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    I know no East or West, North or South, when it comes to my class fighting the battle for justice. If it is my fortune to live to see the industrial chain broken from every workingman’s child in America, and if then there is one black child in Africa in bondage, there shall I go.
    Mother Jones (1830–1930)

    Plot, rules, nor even poetry, are not half so great beauties in tragedy or comedy as a just imitation of nature, of character, of the passions and their operations in diversified situations.
    Horace Walpole (1717–1797)