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TIL even more about the BonJovi bid to buy the Bills

 

 

But according to Michael Caputo, a Buffalo public relations consultant who would go on to work on Trump's presidential campaign, Trump himself came up with the idea for the group at a Trump Tower meeting in early 2014 as a way to tap into widespread fan anxiety at the time over a potential Bills move to Canada.

 

"Mr. Trump was convinced that the community wouldn't stand for a move," Caputo told the AP. "So he sent me off to try to organize something with local fans to get that rolling."

Posted
50 minutes ago, ShadyBillsFan said:

TIL even more about the BonJovi bid to buy the Bills

 

 

But according to Michael Caputo, a Buffalo public relations consultant who would go on to work on Trump's presidential campaign, Trump himself came up with the idea for the group at a Trump Tower meeting in early 2014 as a way to tap into widespread fan anxiety at the time over a potential Bills move to Canada.

 

"Mr. Trump was convinced that the community wouldn't stand for a move," Caputo told the AP. "So he sent me off to try to organize something with local fans to get that rolling."

There's already a thread on this...

 

 

Posted

Today you learned.

It's the 75th anniversary today of the start of Naval Battle of Guadalcanal (or for you Japanese out there: the Third Battle of Savo Island).  It's the most vicious little naval battle you've never heard of:

 

The Japanese and Americans scheduled simultaneous major reinforcements of their forces on Guadalcanal for mid-November.  The dynamic of the campaign overall was interesting - the Americans controlled the airfield on Guadalcanal, but the Japanese were vastly superior in night surface warfare, which meant that the Americans can unload during the day, but would evacuate their transports at night, and the Japanese vice-versa, which caused serious problems unloading.  The solution for the Japanese was to suppress the airfield with battleship bombardment, and for the Americans to simply win night surface battles to keep the IJN out of Indispensable Strait (the main shipping channel off Guadalcanal).

 

What this led to, on the day of Nov. 12, 1942, is two Japanese battleships escorted by a light cruiser and 11 destroyers making their way to Guadalcanal to bombard the airfield.  The US Navy had supply ships unloading at that time; Admiral Kelly Turner threw together a scratch force of five cruisers and eight destroyers to contest the Japanese, under an inexperienced Rear Admiral Daniel Callaghan (who was senior to, but far less experienced than, the other admiral available, Norman Scott) on his flagship USS San Francisco.  

 

On the night of the 13th, Callaghan's force was sailing in column formation, and detected the Japanese force.  Through a series of maneuvers and unclear orders, Callaghan's presumed attempt to cross the front of the Japanese formation instead aimed the American line directly through the center of the dispersed Japanese formation, separated the van destroyers from the column, and forced the lead cruiser - Atlanta, with Scott aboard - to back down and turn hard to port to avoid running over the van destroyers, and the Japanese illuminated Atlanta with searchlights, opened fire, and disabled her.  At this point, with the American fleet in the middle of the Japanese force, command and control fell apart on both sides, and the battle became a close-quarters naval battle unlike any other in the war - "a barroom brawl with the lights shot out." 

 

Admiral Scott was killed by a salvo from USS San Francisco, almost immediately after which Admiral Callaghan was killed by a Japanese shell on San Francisco, along with all the senior officers on the ship and destroyed all communications, leaving command of the entire US force to Lt. Commander Bruce McCandless (it should have gone to the senior captain afloat - Captain Hoover, on USS Helena, but there was no way to communicate that).  McCandless smartly realized that if San Francisco withdrew, the rest of the US force would follow, leaving Guadalcanal uncovered, and conn'd the wrecked ship (San Francisco had every gun destroyed by that point) back towards the Japanese fleet.  And was awarded a well-deserved Medal of Honor for his act.

 

To shorten a long story, in a 38 minute battle so confused that it's still not, and never likely to be, coherently documented, six ships were sunk, two disabled (Atlanta and one Japanese battleship, Hiei) and scuttled later in the day, and of the thirteen American ships committed to battle, only two (Helena and USS Fletcher) were still capable of fighting.  But the self-sacrifice of Callaghan's force turned back a Japanese force that should have dominated the battle, and gained a day's respite for the Americans on Guadalcanal.

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