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:
“Depression moods lead, almost invariably, to accidents. But, when they occur, our mood changes again, since the accident shows we can draw the world in our wake, and that we still retain some degree of power even when our spirits are low. A series of accidents creates a positively light-hearted state, out of consideration for this strange power.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“It is the women of Europe who pay the price while war rages, and it will be the women who will pay again when war has run its bloody course and Europe sinks down into the slough of poverty like a harried beast too spent to wage the fight. It will be the sonless mothers who will bend their shoulders to the plough and wield in age-palsied hands the reaphook.”
—Kate Richards O’Hare (1877–1948)
“Let north and south—let all Americans—let all lovers of liberty everywhere—join in the great and good work. If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union; but we shall have so saved it, as to make, and to keep it, forever worthy of the saving. We shall have so saved it, that the succeeding millions of free happy people, the world over, shall rise up, and call us blessed, to the latest generations.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
““I’ll love you dear, I’ll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“It may seem strange that any road through such a wilderness should be passable, even in winter, when the snow is three or four feet deep, but at that season, wherever lumbering operations are actively carried on, teams are continually passing on the single track, and it becomes as smooth almost as a railway.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)