Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 312 - The Mogami, Japan's Most Unlucky Warship That Refused to Die

Episode Date: May 20, 2024

Check us out on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@lionsledbydonkeyspodcast7424 SUPPORT THE SHOW: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Japan creates a death trap that becomes so unlucky it becomes known throughout the Imperial Japanese Navy during WWII Sources: David Lippman. Mogami: Japan's Luckless Cruiser http://combinedfleet.com/ships/mogami David Brown. Warship Losses of WWII Paul Dull. The Battle History of the Imperial Japanese Navy

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast, but I guess you probably already knew that. If you like what we do here on the show, consider supporting us on Patreon at www.patreon.com slash lions led by donkeys. Just $5 per month gets you every regular episode early, access to our community discord, a digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, as well as its audiobook read by me, and over five years of bonus content. By supporting the show, you support us and allow us to keep our show as it has always

been ad-free. Thank you for listening and I hope you enjoy the show. Hey everybody, welcome to the Lions Led by donkeys podcast. I'm Joe and with me in the dungeon of an imperial Japanese battleship circa the 1940s is Tom. That will make sense in a little while. How are you doing, buddy? I'm I'm good. I've I've been heinously slandered over the past couple of days because I shaved off my beard and kept my mustache to including. I look like a brave, brave stance. May I add as I cannot rock a standalone mustache. I will not be allowed within a certain amount of meters of a school. Yeah.

I have been told I look like a composite picture of if you mashed all of the members of the Birmingham six together into one person, I've been told I look like Danny McBride. Um, and also that I look like I should be on the cover of one of those discreet gay magazines in the 70s called Mechanics Physique Enthusiast. I see it. If you would have asked like in the early to mid 90s to a Midwestern person to draw a gay man, that'd be you. Like it would be like the gay steel worker factory episode of the Simpsons. Like your name would be Roscoe. Or I'm like the fucking mechanic extra in the Hills Have Eyes.

It's called Rusty. You can go both ways. I've never seen myself with just a mustache. I know I couldn't pull it off. I know I couldn't pull it off. I know I couldn't pull it off. Like I can grow a good beard, but the mustache alone can't carry my face. I mean, it can do it. It was just a case of like my beard had gotten long enough that I was like

the skin underneath was dry. So I just like shaved it off. I was meant to do it on Monday before I went and got some tattoos. And then I like fucking was I couldn't find my clippers so then I had to like found a second pair of clippers that were dead couldn't get the charger for them so I had to use an actual razor to shave off my entire beard without shaving foam oh god that sounds like a punishment yeah it was painful very painful but funnily enough I went to a shocks late of this parish, late

of Twitter and a member of the zoo crew. We went to a gig together on Saturday in London and I was going to meet him at a bar before the gig and I walked in and realized, Oh, this is going to be like playing where's Waldo where everyone was dressed up as Waldo. Lots of bald dudes with tattoos. Covered in tattoos, everybody's wearing Fred Perry, nobody has hair. Everyone is like five foot eight or below her and is 40 or older. It's like, yeah, it's a it's a like a

some kind of convention where everybody is dressed up like a mid 80s hardcore guy. Yeah, pretty much, pretty much. And like it was on my birthday. So I had a great day. And then on Monday, my friend Darren Quinn and leather lane tattoo in London. If you're in London, what good tattoos hit up Darren? He was going to do my chess piece, but he hadn't had time to like figure it out. So I was like, do you want to do something else? So I was like, Oh, I have a space on the inside of my bicep, which was a mistake and got a. I can I can understand.

I have one there and it sucks. Yeah. So I got a panther in there. And then I also got a Mr. Peanut on the side of my knee. Got to get that nut. Yeah. I'm all about that nut. I mean, you got to respect the tattoo artist that takes time on something as important as a chest piece, because as someone I don't have

what you'd consider a chest piece. I have a chest tattoo. Yeah. You have a chest tattoo that just says, I love Max Bemus. Yeah, it's true. It's true. Um, it goes well with my, my calf tattoo of, uh, alive with the glory of love. I mean, you were, uh, uh, celebrating punk goes crunk turning 16 the other day, hence meaning that everyone involved in punk goes crunk would not want to fuck it anymore. That is unfair to at least one person on that list, but 99% you're correct. Yeah. Like the

less said about the scene back in the day or any scene for that matter in retrospect, the better. I'm just saying that we can only, we cannot fathom the amount of crimes that were going on behind the scenes that say like any Midwestern warp tour stop. I mean, like to be fair, to be fair to Max Beemas, one, he is an insane person. Um, but he did sensor the N word. Um, when he did, I got your money. But then, uh, scaring, scary kids, scaring kids on notorious dogs, the Bones, hugs and harmony song says the N word like a hundred times and with conviction. Oh, okay. That is to be expect. Like I'm not surprised. And I'm not saying this is like, oh, he was just a cover. Like, no, no, you don't, you don't say it. Um, however,

scary kids, scaring kids fucking suck. So I say this as a full throated scene enthusiast. They were never good. I mean, like they have, they have the energy of a 19 year old who's still in high school. I mean that's kind of What they were and still act like I don't know if they're still a band, but they were never good most actually I completely forgot the punk goes crunk album existed like I know a lot of the other ones From that era. I only could recognize a few names on that list Which is never a good sign since 16 years ago.

I would have possibly listened to that. I love that Scary Kids, Scaring Kids put out an album in 2005, 2007, nothing, and then 2022. Uh, well, I mean, like the emo scene is kind of making a comeback. You know, what is old is new again. Except now it's even more annoying. Like I've yet to see like, I'm never going to say I have a good taste of music. We've talked about this before. My music taste is fucking awful, but it is mine.

Okay. Um, and, uh, I was like, Oh, like these bands are kind of music's kind of making a comeback, could be really interested in this. And I had listened to some of the newer bands. It's like, nope. Do you know who you need to listen to? You need to listen to Coyote, New Jersey, make an emo great again. And they're actually because the thing is, is that they've brought back it away

from like, oh, I really love all time low and fall out boy. And it's like, no, we're really into hardcore because all of the original like emo wave were all hardcore dudes. So it's like, like Sunday real estate was very obviously inspired by hardcore music. Yeah. Like big rights to spring guys and like coyotes. Like what if you got like what you look think of a gigantic Italian guy to sing about his feelings and it's just as good as that idea is. It could be worth it. I mean, there's also, this is not the music corner, though, it turns into it. I do think that there's a certain kind of music being made now that just no longer appeals to me because I am a man in my mid thirties. But, you know, I can still

listen to things with nostalgia eyes on and I have a hard time finding things that like trigger that nostalgia. Even if it is a newer band singing an older style of music that can still get your nostalgia going. I'm not seeing it. I'm not seeing it. These new kids just don't got it, man. They don't got the juice. I mean, at your age, you just have to like, I don't know, get really into late era Bob Dillon or Neil Young, you know, age appropriate to that or imagine dragons. No, I don't hate my like I don't like myself, but I don't hate myself. As a flashback, look at the picture I just sent you.

This is on scary kids scaring kids a Spotify profile. This is their band photo. Oh, my God. Why are they? Why are they? OK, I mean, I have to describe this for people because it is a doozy. You got a guy wearing a camcorder, by the way, this is all a photo shoot taking place in what looks like a rail yard, a non-used rail yard. You have a group of men who are my age, actually probably older, and they are dressed like they are a 16 year old in 2005. I mean, I think this photo is from 2005.

No way. Some of these dudes got fucking Smoker's Growl already, man. You get a guy holding a straight razor to his throat, because of course they're all trying to make like, you have this, some people trying to look hard, like angry faces. One guy's like holding a brick with his fist closed. While wearing a white and baby blue windbreaker and a Henley cap. Flat bill Henley cap with white sunglasses.

This is bad. It's a time machine. I can't do it anymore. Speaking of time machines, we have a history podcast. Oh no. And Tom, are you superstitious at all? It depends. Like, are we talking ghosts?

I mean, I don't know if you want to consider ghosts a superstition. I mean, that's kind of just like some form of belief, I suppose. I guess superstition is as well. Ghosts are real and they live inside your blood. Yeah, my teeth are haunted Like superstition, you know, like things give are a bad omen You can't do one thing or this other thing will happen You know doing this could hurt you even though it's not at all connected to it I'm not very superstitious

I'm certainly very superstitious. I'm certainly not anymore. But you know who really fucking is soldiers? I was going to say the entirety of Russia. Also, actually, I would expand upon that. The entire former Soviet Union is steeped in superstition and woo woo bullshit. Coming soon to the shows at merch store Vladimir Putin tarot cards. Well like that's the thing is like and a lot of this has to do with this is not unique

to the former Soviet Union. You could go to any country, any place, any group of people that kind of it doesn't have like the best institutions whether it be health or otherwise, and they fill the gaps with effectively folklore belief, right? And a lot of that is it can be superstition. It can be what we would see as very woo-woo ideas about health and sickness and disease. Not uncommon, not uncommon at all. And a lot of times it is actually promoted by the

authoritarian power structures because, you know, this glomming on to folklorist belief when it comes to health or wellness or any of these other things, fills the gaps where the state either doesn't want to or cannot. Like, you know, like promoting chewing on bones to make your teeth better just because the state's health infrastructure is collapsed, they don't have fucking dentists. to or cannot. Like, you know, like promoting chewing on bones to make your teeth better just because the state's health infrastructure is collapsed. They don't have fucking dentists shit like that. It has happened before, but that's not what we're talking about today. But we're bringing that. We're bringing chewing on bones back because mewing is now a thing on TikTok. Guys are like chewing this. I'm missing move right past that because I don't want to know

you're getting chin mugged by a 17 year old. Like nobody's chin mugging me. Have you seen my fucking chin? You're all chin. Now, like superstitions in military world are as old as, you know, getting a group of people together with weapons. And it makes sense. You know, you live a kind of life where you have a job where it can end in swift and violent death at seemingly any moment. So you latch on to anything that can give you some form of control over the outcome of that life. And, you know, it scope of things, but I experienced this personally because I was a tank crewman and I don't know anybody in the U S military more superstitious than tank crewman.

I mean, yeah, that is personal bias, but it is literally the closest you can be to being a character in 40 K is just being a tanker. Kind of, yeah. You're praying to the Emperor that it doesn't break down or you don't boil alive inside of it. I mean, like I knew guys who swore up and down they could hear something when it was off when you can't. The tank is just so fucking loud.

You hear nothing but jet engines screaming. You know, you can't eat certain foods on the tank. You know, you can't eat certain foods on the tank. You know, you can't put certain things on the track. You can't do this thing or the other thing. Like it all eventually leads back to the tank will break and you'll fucking die. And I get it. Like I didn't believe it, but you go along with it

due to the pressures around you. Because these things kind of form over time when you live in existence where if you're ever committed to a real peer-on-peer conflict, you're almost certainly dying in a flash of light that reduces you little more to burnt scrapings on the inside of a can. And all of this leads us to our topic today, the Mogami. Now the Mogami was a ship that within the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II that had such bad juju around it that Imperial Japanese sailors considered it bad luck. And we're going to talk about why that is the case and why they might actually be right. The

Mogami was born in the era of Japanese naval expansion known as the first naval armament supplements program or the circle one. Now this all has to do with the London Naval Treaty. We've talked about this a lot. So I'm not going to go into a lot of depth here, but to make a very long story short, the treaty limited size armament and the numbers of certain navies could have, you know, like ships couldn't be a certain size, they couldn't be armed with guns this big, blah, blah.

And every country kind of had a different thing what they were allowed to do as far as those numbers and armaments were concerned within the treaty. And, you know, it was a kind of, what happened was is immediately after signing it, every single navy in the world kind of launched into a weird legalese battle about them technically getting things that were within the lines of the treaty, but everybody planning on breaking it and violating it on every turn.

And that's what the Circle One was. It was a plan to use legalese to break the treaty and more like bend it to its will and prepare for when the treaty was either broken or expired. This led to the Mogami-class cruiser. The Mogami was not a battleship because, you see, Japan was limited to the amount of battleships it could have, but the Mogami, the namesake of the Mogami-class and all of its sister ships would come as close to becoming a battleship as legally possible at the time.

This is a considering this is the country that made the battleship Yamato. Not looking forward to this. I will say this ship has a worse life than the than the Yamato only because the Yamato was like this propaganda coo thing so they never wanted to risk it in battle. Whereas the Mogami like nah fucking throw it in a battle and this is what happens The Mogami could go 35 knots it to place tens of thousands of tons and it had 10 8 inch guns And it was also armed with a dozen Torpedoes and all this is done with the treaty in mind for example

It's 8 inch guns could rapidly be replaced with even bigger ones should the treaty expire or be violated or someone withdraw from it. And spoiler alert, in case you're not aware of where this is going, World War II happens and this treaty goes to shit. So in the case that happens, Japan's like, oh,

we already planned for this. Take off the eight inch guns, put the fucking battleship guns on it. Now it's a battleship. Which similarly is what Japan is doing today with its quote unquote helicopter carriers, which are completely ready to be turned into an aircraft carrier at any moment despite the fact they're not allowed to have one. This is on our Kuznetsov episode, we talked about how, you know, oh, you know, an aircraft carrier can't go through these straits, but a missile carrier can. So strap it full of missiles.

It's not an aircraft carrier. Boom. Lawyered. Yeah. It's like lying to customs that things are sold as gifts. Exactly. Unless they're less customs is listening right now. We would never do that. Yes, please. Please don't listen. Customs. There is lots of things that you don't want to know. Don't look inside of Tom's suitcase full of 800000 cigarettes every time he crosses the fucking into the euro zone. Hey, listen, they tried to argue with me when I was flying to Ireland that, oh, the legal limit you can bring is 250 cigarettes or 200 cigarettes. That is not true. I have brought literally a thousand cigarettes into Ireland before. Don't lie to me.

I know more than you, person in Gatwick, duty free. I am single handedly raising the smoking rate of the Republic of Ireland every time I cross the border. I'm doing I'm doing like IRA level schemes of selling illegal cigarettes. Now, this ship was huge even for a treaty ship. So Japan had to find other ways so it can meet these metrics, namely when it came to weight. Now, I'm going to get all the boring engineering shit out of the way.

It meant that the Japanese shipbuilders would need to save weight not only to not break the treaty, but also make it so the ship could still go to a decent clip. It could go kind of fast, right? To do this, they settled on electric welding rather than standard welding, normally used for ships, specifically warships of the day.

And welding uses materials, so it adds materials to bond materials together through the process of welding. Electric welding uses significantly less of them. And you might be thinking, well, doesn't that make the welds not as good? Yes, and that will become important later. Welders sound off in the chat.

We support the welders union. Not the Japanese Imperial Welders Union though. Not them. To be fair, they're all probably dead, either from old age or being liquefied in a bombing campaign. Yeah. If you're really into welding, send us some pictures of Japanese welding with a full essay critique of their TIG welding

and like, you know, fucking whatever type of welding technique. And like, another thing is to save weight, this had a very big power plant. It had this new revolutionary engine that had three propellers rather than two. So it's gonna be a lightweight chip with a very overpowered engine and really big fucking guns.

This could be great hypothetically and also seemingly for the first time in Japanese naval history considerations for the crew were made and remember like we've talked about the realities of life within the Imperial Japanese military for hours at this point in short it's not good. They don't care for creature comforts. Discipline is mostly violence. It's rough. And that goes for the Navy as well. And the Empire of Japan stretched through the Pacific

at this time and obviously they had plans to stretch it even further. So that would require being on a ship for even longer in order to secure said empire. And service on a ship in that era was fucking miserable. It was hot. Life sucked. So the Japanese installed air conditioning in the Mogami, which sounds kind of like no shit, but back then it was fucking revolutionary. It was the first ship in Japan to have one. Like it's the 1940s. Yeah. And to go even

further than this, drinking water aboard the ship was also cool because previous to this, they'd have to drink like hot water from the taps. The only water that makes you thirstier. Yeah, like, I know everybody loves to be refreshed by a nice glass of hot water from a ship's pipes. I mean, they're definitely they're like choir probably sounded great. And their throats are all relaxed because of all the hot water they're drinking.

I feel like the Japanese Imperial Navy choir has mostly just been screaming from abuse and then, you know, committing said abuse against other people. Yeah. Well, like at least their cries didn't have any vocal for I on them. Yeah. They're really hitting the the castrato levels of pitch while they're getting the shit beaten out of them aboard their ships. Just some soldier on the ground being kicked nearly to death and he's just hitting the Mariah Carey whistle tone. The ship also had expanded refrigeration and kitchen facilities,

meaning it would serve the best food in the entire Navy. And also everybody would be served endless amounts of pickles, which sounds weird, but actually has a lot of very good health benefits when you're bored as shit for a very long time. And also, maybe you just really like pickles. All these things are coming up good for the sailors. And they would no longer be forced to sleep in hammocks. And I know everybody likes hammocks when you're out camping and whatever.

I can't sleep on one. I won't be able to fucking move the next day. But like when you have to live on a hammock for months at a time, it's not great. And aboard the Mogami and its class, they would have normal metal bunk beds of first for the Japanese Navy. Yeah, hammocks aren't great for, you know, back support. You know, you're waking up, you have to do stretches in the morning. It's not. Yeah. Especially after doing, you know, a long day of fucking horrific

physical labor aboard a shitty cruiser or whatever. The Navy had come to a revolutionary conclusion that sailors that didn't hate their lives were better at their jobs. Yeah. Job satisfaction. It's important. Now, they did counterbalance that by everyone being horrifically abused by their superiors. But you know, you win some, you lose some. Yeah, they'll be very comfortable for like the six months of service that they survive until they're ventilated by a torpedo bomber. Yeah. Yes. Am I verbally abused at every opportunity? Yes. Do I have an N-64? Yes. Win some, lose some.

Go back in time. Deliver the crew of Mogami one single PS1 and absolutely blow their minds. Yeah, I'd be very interested to see about the activities of the Nintendo Corporation during the period of what, 1940 to 1945? Uh, it's best that you don't. Same for any Japanese corporation that was around back then. Yeah, the Toyota, stuff like that. Now as the Mogami and the rest of its sister ships got crewed, with around 850 men apiece, it quickly became the most sought after assignment in the entire Japanese Navy, and that would change pretty quickly. It went out for its first actual exercise and things did not go great.

In 1935, the Mogami under the command of Siichiro Ito was assigned to the 4th Fleet, which was supposed to take part in some naval war games. Small side note here, this is Ito's second ever command and he would go on to take part in a different battle which we talked about Operation Tengou, the suicide run of the Amado. So he's the last captain of the Yamato. It all comes back full circle, baby. Do you want to know about Nintendo's activities during World War II? They mostly did like playing card games back then, right? Yeah. So in October of 1945, Nintendo released the backgammon board intended

for kids that featured several images that promoted Japan's involvement in the war. All of the images were different types of animals dressed up as soldiers. Perhaps the most interesting image is a bunny rabbit and a turtle waving the Japanese flag on a gun with a torn up American and British flags laying at the bottom of the hill they were standing on. See, at least it was only a playing card company, so it can do anything too horrific other than just propaganda. You know, like Dr. Seuss. Yeah. Well, if you know what, if they actually went ahead with the plans

to drop the bomb in Kyoto, that means we wouldn't have gotten Super Mario. Who's the safe? That's a good thing or a bad thing. Yeah. Now another small side note here, ito son died a few days after his dad because he was a kamikaze pilot and that kind of comes with the job, you know, unless you happen to be Shinzo Abe's dad who had volunteered to be a kamikaze pilot and that kind of comes with the job, you know, unless you happen to be Shinzo Abe's dad who had volunteered to be a kamikaze pilot, but the war ended before he could do his job. And we're all pretty sad for that. Anyway, Ito and the Mogami sailed out with the rest of the fleet to take part in this

exercise only to get smacked with a goddamn typhoon. Now ships can do okay. Modern ships can do okay in weather events like this and the vast majority of this training fleet was fine. The Moogami not so much. The welding job put in a place to save weight may have actually saved weight and done that, but it also turned out to be not such a great way to weld a warship together. The hull and fixtures of the ship were completely warped so badly by the typhoon damage that the ship's turret couldn't even move.

And the Moogami barely even made it back to port without sinking. Almost all of the ship's systems had been horrifically damaged to the point that complete and total overhaul to the ship from the ground up needed to be done to fix the damage. And it would take years. Just in time for World War II to start. And if you think that getting hit by a typhoon is the worst thing that's going to happen to the Mogami, oh boy. Now when World War II kicked off, Mogami was sent to support the invasions of Malaya and

Borneo. However, those went off without a hitch. Mogami's first real battle was the Battle of the Tsumda Strait in 1942. Mogami and her fellow class ship, the Mikuma, were covering Japanese landings at Batnam Bay in Java, Indonesia. This was a huge operation. There's over 50 Japanese transport ships alone, unloading men and machines on the beach. It was a big operation.

And the Mogami being the Battleship sized cruiser that it was it was still technically a cruiser, but it was so big everybody Just thought it was a battleship whenever they saw it You know its job was to guard these transport ships then the American heavy cruiser USS Houston and the Australian light cruiser HMAS Perth and the Australian light cruiser HMAS Perth happened upon the landings and attacked them. The transport ships had a close escort, you know, close support. It was a destroyer, a lighter ship. The destroyer was immediately outgunned and they're like, oh dear God, fucking come and

help us Mogami and Makuma. And they rushed to help. Mogami charged into battle, firing six of her 12 torpedoes in quick succession and scored five hits, sinking each of her twelve torpedoes in quick succession and scored five hits, sinking each of those ships that it hit. Now, if you're thinking, that math does not add up. They were only attacked by two allied ships. How did they sink five ships?

Well, they didn't hit a single allied ship. They hit nothing but Japanese ships with their torpedoes. They're operating on the Russian military's statistics. Every single one of her torpedoes slammed directly into Japanese transport ships. The landing ships Ryujo Maru, the Army transports Sakura Maru, Sasuno Maru, and the Horai Maru, and a Navy Minesweeper. Sinking them all. Even funnier, aboard one of those ships was Lieutenant General Hideyoshi Inamura, the

commander of the 16th Army and the overall commander of the invasion. He had to be saved from the ocean as he was bobbing up and down like floating on wreckage of his ship after the Mogami had sank it. And Inamura and most other people assumed the USS Houston had been the one that do the damage, right? And when the Navy was going to go and apologize to him for it, which is impressive because we've talked about before the internal politics and the factuals

in between the Navy and the Army, even the Navy is like, ooh, that one's bad. However, they were stopped by other members of the army saying like, don't tell Imamura he thinks it was the Houston. Just let him believe that. Despite the fact that Houston was not armed with torpedoes at all. They're terrible players of battleship, literally. It depends. Do you want to go how you normally play a game of battleship or do you want to scare your opponent by spinning your ships

around and immediately sinking half of your own? It's a proof of strength like I don't need all these ships. I don't even need these five ships. Like cutting off your legs and was like I don't need these. I don't need my hands. I'll fucking headbutt you to death. And it's kind of impressive that in its first real taste of combat immediately kills hundreds of its own men.

Now despite the fuck up, the battle was still won by the Japanese fleet, the Houston and the Perth were both sunk, and most of the damage to the fleet was actually done by the Mogami. From here the Mogami's service is largely normal, at least for a few months, until June's Battle of Midway. Now Mogami is not slated to travel to Japanese carrier groups that take part in the Battle of Midway, otherwise the story would probably end here. However, the next part of the overall plan for the Japanese was

the invasion of Midway Island. There was not just supposed to be a naval battle. There's an island involved that was supposed to be invaded, there's air strips that need to be taken over, whatever. But that was all now clearly shit-canned by way of horrific military defeat. 90 miles away from that decisive battle, Mogami and the rest of her cruiser division were ordered to return home rather than get crushed. Then around 2am on June 5th, a Japanese spotter sighted a surfaced enemy submarine. The cruiser's division Rear Admiral Takeo Kurita ordered emergency

evasion via a series of blinking lights on the back of his ship. In this case it was a 45 degree abrupt turn to the port side. Now this is not an easy thing to do and aboard the Mogami its navigation officer, Lieutenant Commander Misaki Yamauchi, pushed his deck officer out of the way, insisting, I'm the only one here that can pull this off, right? I alone have the skills. How does this go, Joe? Well, okay.

First of all, I need to underline that this is actually a hard thing to pull off, right? The cruiser division was traveling together very closely for for ships this size of course, and pulling it off would require knowing where every single ship in that convoy is and which ship is which ship. Like it would require a picture perfect knowledge of what was going on around it. And you'd have to know when exactly to turn, at what speed, through a churning ocean

so everybody can move without smacking into one another. And it turned out Yamouchi didn't know any of those things and he crashed directly into Mogami's sister ship, the Makuma. Russian military statistics going up. Now the front of the Mogami was crushed, but that's not the worst damage it caused. It knifed directly into the belly of the Makuma, rupturing its fuel storage tanks, and oil began streaming out into the ocean, creating an unmistakable black trail in the water. This is, in the, you know, perlance of naval warfare, bad, because remember, it can be

sighted for miles away. Yeah, like, you'd think if your main tactical, you know, offensive maneuver is I'm going to ram into another ship, you don't do it to your own allies, you just aim for the enemy. Uh, hold that thought, Tom. Oh, for fuck's sake. Now all of this was witnessed by the submarine itself, the USS Tambor, which this must have been fucking hilarious for it, right? It's sitting there watching these ships like, oh, oh, oh, they crashed into one another. Didn't even have to fire a torpedo at one of them. Well done, team. Now, what was more important than sitting back and laughing at these guys is that they radioed back to Midway saying, quote, cited two battleships, and remember this, the Makuma and the Mogami, they're not actually battleships,

but bearing 264, distance 125 miles, course 168, speed 15, ship damage, streaming oil. The cruiser division had to slow down due to the damage to both of those ships, meaning it did not take long for a squadron of American dive bombers to catch up with them, guided into target by the streaming trail of black oil that was now steaming the ocean.

They might as well have just painted a crosshairs on it. Pretty much. That's exactly what they did. Now the dive bombers didn't manage to hit anything with their bombs, but the Japanese did get dealt a good old fashioned UNO reverse card. Because Captain Robert Fleming's dive bomber was hit with anti-aircraft fire knowing he was completely and totally fucked, instead of simply crashing into the ocean and dying, he steered the plane toward the Makuma, crashing directly into one of its turrets, exploding

and starting a massive fire across the ship. The fire spread rapidly out of control to the Makuma's engine rooms which then exploded. The Makuma did not sink but another wave of bombers damaged the Magami as well killing several of its crewmen and at this point the cruisers have been forced to slow to a complete crawl making them even easier targets so on June 6, the American carriers Enterprise and Hornet deployed 57 dive bombers to attack them again. They bombed the hell out of them. One ship, the Salvatore, had a bomb punch through its deck and explode in the middle

of its first aid station, evaporating the sick, wounded, and the ship's entire medical staff all at once. There's just a dude who's got a boo-boo, he's got like a plaster on his finger, and he's like, oh my finger hurts, and next thing he's just evaporated. You know, it's one of those things, every soldier, sailor, airman, whatever, will eventually lie to get out of work and say they're sick. This is a bad day to do that, because you just be churned to bullshit in the engine

compartment or whatever. The Mogami took a hit on the turret causing a fire and killing more of its crew but the majority of the attacks are set on the Makuma because the pilot saw it was on fire and dying in the water already and they aimed to finish it off. After being crashed into and beat into hell with planes and bombs the captain of the Makuma finally ordered the ship to be abandoned, but not before one of its gunnery officers, Lieutenant Masayo Koyama, drew his sword and committed suicide in the forward turret rather than leave the ship. Because why not? Hundreds of men and hundreds more were in the water, drowning in a mixture of water

and oil. All of this was caught on film by a Fox movie-toned camera crew that was flying aboard one of the American bombers. Then the American bombers and escorting fire pilots circled back around and began strafing runs on the stricken Japanese sailors in revenge for the Japanese doing the exact same thing to American crews throughout the Pacific campaign and if you're wondering, was this war crime caught on tape? You bet your fucking ass it was. Fox recorded all of that shit. Took her car and was furiously masturbating to it to this day. I mean at this time everybody would have been fine with it.

Somehow through all of this the Mogami survived though 90 of its crew were dead and 100 were wounded. She had more holes punched in her than my mom if Xbox Live voice chat circa 2006 is to be believed, but somehow still steaming ahead. The Mogami eventually made it back to Japan where she'd have to undergo multiple repairs. However, at this point, remember, Japan is feeling the stress of getting their teeth kicked in and the repairs and the retrofits would be, let's say, less than ideal. Japan had lost quite a few aircraft carriers at this point, and was doing anything it could

to make up for that fact. Now that included stripping away portions of the Mogami in order to make room for 11 sea planes. Fuck it, making an aircraft carrier. And if you're wondering, well, don't you need extra fuel and bombs for those? Yeah, they just stored those under the turret. Under the turrets of the where their guns were. Mind you, that is probably where the majority of incoming fire would be and bombs would be for many attacking bombers, but store all those explosives there. Fuck it.

Yeah, the only way that they could get the ship to not explode was to put it the most explosive materials where they're gonna like Be shot at so it's like, you know idiots logic. It's explosive reactive armor for a ship But also, you know, you have to work next to it. Yeah, if it blows up our bullets will just go faster Exactly in May of 1943 the Mogami was rushed to the Aleutian Islands because the Japanese believed the Americans are planning an invasion to retake them. Now we did an episode on this, go and listen to it, but that's not the time frame for this invasion and the reinforcements from the Navy were eventually called off. But that is not before the Mogami crashed into another ship, again causing a giant oil

spill. This will still not be the last time it crashes into another ship. I'm shaking my head. This is actually unbelievable. It's not necessarily that this ship was poorly designed, it's just everyone in charge of it is fucking stupid. It's a combination of really bad luck, stupidity, and the continuing degradation, degradation of like crew quality, right?

Because they're constantly losing people. The Navy is losing thousands of people all the time. So the sailors that they get are continuously lesser quality, right? Like you get from, especially after the Battle of Midway then into the Battle of Philippine Sea which we will talk about in a few seconds like the quality of the Japanese Navy is in a death spiral and this is like we got this guy's like fucking 16 or whatever he wants to be in a in the Navy so on the job training enjoy oh by the way everything's exploding we can't stop

crashing and everybody yeah but you don't have to sleep in a hammock. Yeah. And you got cold water. Yeah. You got cold water. You got good food. You got an N64 somewhere. Yeah. It's it's in there. You got Mario. It's fine. You got these racist Nintendo playing cards. What else could you want? Got pickles. You like pickles? Like don't mind the pickle fridge is also on fire because we crashed into the other pickle fridge. Yeah, the pickles are they are pickled in gasoline. So, you know, like if you like your finger, if you like your pickles, that tastes like petrol, then you're fine.

Hell, yeah. Sounds like an ideal working situation. This sounds like applying for a media job in London right now. Yeah, we got pickles in the fridge. We've drinks on Friday. You will suffer horrible human rights abuses and will not be respected as a person. But do you like pickles?

Have I mentioned I pickled these cucumbers in my own piss? Yes, piss pickles. Eat them while I watch. Now, from there, the ship was sent to Rabaul, where she was bombed again, starting another fire that got so bad that its magazines had to be flooded to stop the ship from exploding, and 19 more men of the crew died.

At this point, Japanese sailors had begun to see the Mogami as a bad luck charm and serving on it as a bad omen, but also a death sentence, which is pretty impressive when you remember these are Japanese sailors. In 1943, everything is bad luck, but somehow out of all of that the Mogami is worse than that It's just impressive and the worst is yet to come from here The Mogami traveled through the most legendary naval defeat of all time the Battle of the Philippine Sea Which went so badly it's known as the great Mariana's turkey shoot Which we will eventually talk about in depth at some point.

And the Mogami missed the worst of it, and it survived with limited damage and was ready to go in time to take part in the next legendary naval defeat, the Battle of Leyte Gulf. You just have like James Cameron like flying around in his little submarine looking for the Titanic. What? Marianas Trench is where this where the fucking Titanic is, isn't it? No, this is different. This is in the Pacific. Oh, OK. I don't know.

I'm just saying shit. My whole job on this show is to just say shit. So I don't know. Deploy James Cameron to the Pacific Theater. Do you know what? Listen, the welding on this ship is so good, if they had those Japanese guys in Belfast when they built the Titanic, maybe it wouldn't have sank. I mean the welding isn't great.

I mean how many ships has it crashed into and it is the ship that's still floating. Okay that's fair enough. It won't die. It refuses to die. On October 20th, 1944, when the American invasion of the Philippines started, Mogami was put in the 3rd naval section under the command of Vice Admiral Shoji Nishimura. Nishimura's plan, Shoichi Go or Victory 1, involved distracting the superior American carrier force while its cruisers and battleships circled around them and hit the US transport fleet near Leyte, killing the invasion before it could hit the shore. Nishimura and therefore

Mogami's part in this attack would be steaming through the Surigao Strait in order to get to the American transport ships. This whole feint of course was supposed to be a secret, and it would be the only way this whole thing would work, but it was never a secret for more than 10 seconds. The Americans knew about it pretty much as soon as their fleet left Brunei to head for the attack. Their codes had been cracked. Rear Admiral Oldendorf, the American commander, prepared what amounted to be a naval firing squad for them to run into. Layers of different ships, from PT torpedo boats all the way to battleships would be waiting for the Japanese as they close in on their targets. The two sides met one another in pitch darkness

firing across the sea. That is when Nishimura discovered a small problem with his plan. How small is this problem? It's pretty fundamental, honestly. It's kind of shocking how big of an oversight this is. Hahahaha! Japanese sailors had not been trained to tell Japanese ships apart in the darkness, but rather only American ships. So it kind of goes without saying that if you only know half of that

equation, you know none of it. Oh, God's sake. They couldn't tell. Like, I had to do vehicle identification when I was in tank crew school. And you have to learn to identify every allied armored vehicle as well as, you know, this is 2005 and every Russian vehicle. And you have to be able to tell them apart through every kind of optics, day, infrared and night. And you have to take a test on it. And if you get one wrong on the friendly portion, you immediately fail. Cause obviously that's a pretty big fuck up. You've just killed it. You just killed a friendly person, right?

Yeah, that's it. So it seems like a real fundamental problem. Because if you only memorize like Warsaw packed tanks, you don't know what any of your, you don't know, then you don't know anything. Right? Like the, the, the Japanese sailors were all, especially the gunners and the, the site officers and all of these weapons officers were only taught to recognize American ships, not Japanese ships, which means they were only taught to recognize ships in general, right? Like you can't only do 50% of that expected to work out. Listen, you look at the sea, is there a boat there?

Is it a really big boat? That's a ship. That's an enemy. And now this is only specifically at night. Obviously it's very easy to tell during the day. And as it turns out, this battle is beginning at night. So as this battle begins, it did not take long for the Mogami and the Japanese ship Fuso

to begin shooting at one another. All ships radioed that they were under fire and requested immediate assistance, while not knowing they had been the one shooting at one another. However, Nishimura, their commander, did know they were shooting at one another and was screaming over communications like, cut that shit the fuck out. It's playing stop hitting yourself with yourself. It's like, stop hitting yourself while you're punching yourself in the fuck out. It's playing stop hitting yourself with yourself It's like stop hitting yourself while you're punching yourself in the face voluntary

I mean that is the entire plot of fight club But you know it does it works well in a cinematic experience not in Japanese fight club. Yeah. Oh Man so somewhere Mishima's nutting so hard at the idea of an Imperial Japanese fight club. Oh god, yeah. He's just like, he's like SpongeBob squirting out water. Every pore. So Nishima or their commander is screaming at them like, cut that shit out, and they finally did. However, when Mogami cut out their firing, Fuso fired one last blast from its cannons, hitting the Mogami, killing several of its men. The Mogami then was like, oh, we must have been mistaken, that was an American ship,

so they opened fire again at the Fuso. Then Nishimura was finally able to get his ships to shop shooting at one another and begin shooting in the right direction, only for the Americans to finally step in and start doing some damage. A storm of torpedoes tore the Fuso to pieces, and the Yamashiro, the flagship, and the Mogami took the lead in the charge towards the American lines to try to break through. I mean, if there's one thing this ship is really good at, it's ramming into other ships, so I suppose maybe they should have been doing this from the start?

Hold that thought. As I said before, that would not be the last time it ran into a ship, and I never said it would be an American ship, did I? I hate being right on this show. The Yamashiro, the flagship, took the brunt of the attacks, but it didn't take long for the American guns to turn on the Mogami, something made easier by the fact that the Yamashiro is now on fire next to it and illuminating the darkness as it passed by. However, in all of this confusion,

the captain of the Mogami, Ryo Toma, now hauling ass towards the American lines and there's other Japanese ships they're shooting. His captain's flagship, the rear admiral flagship, is on fire and with all of this confusion, and not to mention occasionally shooting at his own ships, he got lost. It's pitch darkness, right?

He can't tell with all of these maneuvers, am I still going the same direction? Am I pointed towards my lines or American lines right now? I need to know this before I open fire and shoot at one of my own ships again. I can't do that twice in one day that'd make me look bad. or American lines right now I need to know this before I open fire and you know shoot at one of my own ships again I can't do that twice in one day that make me look bad yeah you know there's this really simple thing that probably would have solved this situation and it's called a compass don't know if you

ever heard one of the basic map skills navigation skills in the sea something you'd expect from a captain in a Navy in command of a ship with nearly a thousand men on it. Yeah. Surely someone on that ship. Our standards are too high, Tom. So surely someone on that ship could have, you know, looked at the sky and been like, oh, that's that constellation there.

That's north. What if I told you instead I could just flick on my signal lights. Because I'm pretty sure I'm pointing towards my own ships, they'll flick the signal lights back and I know to turn the other way. He turned on the signal lights, directly at the American line of ships, and they lit him the fuck up. Surely this is the end of this ship. Eventually.

This is the ship that refuses to die. American shells crashed into the ships, one detonated in the radio room, others sheared off its anti-aircraft gun, still others hit the main mast, which caused the entire superstructure of the ship to begin to sag and warp under the stress and damage. Its turrets were hit, another shell slammed into the structure next to its air intake, flooding the engine room with smoke. Lighting failed and the emergency lights no longer worked, forcing the crews to work in complete and total darkness. On the bridge, everything broke down into a screaming match. Toma, who was somehow still alive, knew that they were screwed and told

his officers, we need to get the fuck out of here if we're going to save this ship. However, his officers yelled back that the only honorable thing to do was to continue the attack and break through the American lines. Toma had a feeling that that was completely and totally impossible at this point on account of the ship actively burning around us, but taved to the pressure because his bravery was called into question and of the ship actively burning around us, but cave to the pressure because his bravery was called into question and ordered the ship to turn back towards American lines and go on the attack. I'm going to let you guess here. How long do you think Tomas survives after this?

30 seconds, two minutes. Two minutes is a respectively long amount of time, Joe. I don't know what you're saying. So at 4 a.m. the ship turns back towards American lines after Toma caves the pressure. At 4.02 a shell smashes into the bridge killing Toma and everyone under his command and the command staff. And the ship is still going. The ship is not only still going, it's a zombie at this point, because it is still moving

full steam ahead, but nobody's in command or in control of anything. It's just in a death charge. That is when Chief Petty Officer First Class, Suichi Yamamoto, suddenly found himself the last ranking officer with all of his body parts still attached and still kind of close to the bridge. And he's like, oh, fuck, I'm in control of this now. Oh no, it's on me. And now he has to try to figure out

how the fuck to control everything because that shell had just potted them so well that blew all the normal controls. So he had to go to the emergency controls. Everything else is churned meat and burning metal. So as he's trying to figure out how to make the ship obey his commands, another shell hit one of the engine rooms, shooting high pressure boiling water and steam into the compartment, melting the engineers.

I mean, like, imagine the American gunner who was firing those shells, like, first shot, feel pretty good and then you realize oh shit it's not stopping and it's coming straight towards us and there's no one in control it won't fucking die I mean the same thing happened to the Yamamoto as well like when it got hit for people who didn't listen to the episode like it was doing it's like engine rudder got stuck so it was just doing a circle. Endlessly, as everybody was shooting the piss out of it and all the survivors on board couldn't figure out how

to make it stop. Hey listen, it's built pretty fucking well. I take back my earlier comments. Finally, Chief Petty Officer Yamamoto managed to turn the Mogami away from battle, because he just accepted, look, the battle's fucking lost, it doesn't matter, we managed to turn the Mogami away from battle because he just accepted, look, the battle's fucking lost, it doesn't matter, we need to get the fuck out of here. The battle of the Surigao Strait was so one-sided that the Japanese didn't even manage to hit a single American ship. However, the Americans still managed to lose 39 men to friendly fire because the Japanese

were not the only people fucking up that day. Now the Mogami and the rest of its surviving fleet were trying to limp away but that didn't mean the Mogami was done. While she was running she still managed to crash into another ship, the Natchi. And so this tears a massive gash down the Natchi's hull at the water line which causes the ship to begin to sink. Yamamoto, the chief petty officer, not the ship, grabbed a bullhorn and yelled out to the Natchez, this is the Mogami, captain and XO are dead, gunnery officer in charge, steering destroyed,

steering by engines, sorry. That's learning on the job. Sorry, it's my friend. It's the Simpsons thing when he, when Homer becomes in charge of a summary, like, sorry, it's my first day. Uh, and then he like quacks it out to the penguins and everything. And it was like, Oh, ha ha ha ha. Except he's doing well, actively being bombed by the U S Navy.

Still there was an element within the Mogami and the surviving fleet that demanded they continue the attack against the Americans. However, those with a couple brain cells still rattling around between their ears were like, what the fuck are you talking about? We have to get the fuck out of here. Everything is on fire. The engineers have just been turned into a soup. We got to go.

However, that was easier said than done. Mogami was still actively on fire as it pulled away and while its sailors had spassed to try and control the blaze, they were losing it and honestly it's hard to blame them given the fact that almost all of their officers are dead at this point. So like every, and you know, half of the ship

is blown apart. The flames grew so fucking hot that ammo is now cooking off at random and like some of the officers are In the damage control like mode and they're trying to like get get the fucking ammo out of here Just throw it in the ocean But they waited so long to do it and to act not to mention actually have a chance to do it because they were Actively under fire trying to put fires out all other things, shooting down bombers and shit that are coming at them.

That as sailors are like picking up torpedoes to hawk them in the ocean, they explode in their hands and just wipe out entire crowds of sailors all at once. You know, like most of the time when we do these episodes, I have a general feeling when we're getting towards the end of the script. This is different. This feels like this could go on for the next hour. The Mogami is actually still circling the globe to this day on fire with Japanese zombie sailors trying to put it out. Yeah, it's like a ghost ship. It's like Davy Jones and Pirates of the Caribbean. Yeah, except instead of being turned into undying pirates, they're just constantly

being blasted by boiling hot steam and there's an eternal carrier group chasing them to the ends of the world. Now the ship's engines were actively burning and the last functioning engine room, because there's multiple engine rooms on these ships, But the last functioning room, the men finally had to abandon their position because mind you, they're working completely blind. There is smoke just gushing into the engine room. The engine is on fire and the room got to 150 degrees before they finally said, we got to get the fuck out of here or we're gonna die.

Then the Americans showed back up, opening fire on the dying Mogami. Oldendorf said the Mogami was burning like a city block and somehow it was still moving. But now the sun came up, which meant the bombers were going to come back. The Mogami was hit by another torpedo which was quickly followed by two more bombs. This finally brought the Mogami to a halt. Fires were burning out of control across the ship and everybody who wasn't at work trying to fight off bombers from actively killing them were trying to put the fires out. And they were losing.

Another hit set the ship's oil reserves on fire, forcing the commander to order the magazines flooded lest they explode and destroy the entire ship, but there had been so much damage done to the ship at this point that the valves that would have flooded the magazines were broken and also on fire so the compartments could not be flooded. Things that are like, should not be on fire are on fire. The chief petty officer turns towards his assistant who's also on fire, he's like oh fuck when did that start? Finally at 10.30am, the signal for an abandoned ship was given and the crew escaped to safety

to the nearby ship, the Akebono. The Akebono then turned back towards the Mogami and fired one final torpedo into it, killing it for good. Somehow, out of all of this, its crew of 892 people, 700 managed to survive. Well, you know what? The Americans were doing the most American of pastimes and only killing officers. Also the one civilian that happened to be on board

the Mogami survived, he probably picked a bad fucking day to go on that ship. And that is the story of the Mogami, Japan's most unlucky ship that refused to die before it finally did. Totally unkillable. The only part- The unsinkable ship. The only ship that could kill the Mogami was another Japanese ship. Yeah, it had to commit ship seppuku. The akabono was its second, you know, the one that cuts its head off at the very end

There's the most honorable way for the Mogami to finally shuffle off its mortal coil Now Tom we do a thing on this show called questions from the Legion if you like to ask us a question from the Legion you can donate to the show and then you ask a question on patreon or our discord or donate to the show and then you ask a question on Patreon or our Discord or you can pack it into an Imperial Japanese ship and set it on fire and set it towards the UK and Tom will read it. Today's question is a personal favorite I think of the both of us. What is your least favorite airport? I immediately know which one's coming to mind for me.

You go first. Charles de Gaulle, Paris. I've had a lot of bad flying experiences in my life and I have to discount a lot of them because I was flying in military chartered aircraft, flying into airports that hardly function as airports. I think I've told the story before about how I like flew into like Romania into a closed down airport and There was like an airport terminal that was completely locked that was then Opened by a single man who pulled up in a Mercedes packed full of sex workers and everybody was in tracksuits

Like that I give a pass to that guy But the worst by far Charles de Gaulleulle Paris. There cannot be anything that compares to the horrors of that airport. Holy fucking shit. I will never fly. So I have flown through Charles de Gaulle twice now. Both times have been bad, but the worst one was this last time

where my flight came in late because they didn't have enough space for us to land. So that's an airport fuckup. Then knowing our flight of like 300 fucking people was late, they had precisely one security checkpoint open, nobody manning it, so that meant it was not technically open. And then they finally put someone behind it who was going through one bag at a time despite the fact that an X-ray machine, he was opening each one very, very slowly. Now we're all going to be late for our connection flight.

300 fucking plus people are all begging this guy, please open another security point. And he's like, there is nothing I can do. I don't know. Like, I am doing everything I can. He's not doing anything though. And then I'm not one to lose my temper on people and their jobs, right? It's a shitty thing to do. They're in a shit situation.

You just have to fucking eat it, right? I lost my shit. And I was like, because this guy is looking at, mind you, I have been very rude to TSA employees in the United States as well. Airports are a place where everybody is a petulant fucking child, myself and employees included. I think we all can agree on that. And this guy is going through my bag.

The slow, like so slow it has to be out of spite. And I used to start fucking screaming at him. And I was like, oh, did you fucking find anything? You fucking idiot. Just put my fucking bag through the x-ray so I can fuck it. I'm gonna miss my goddamn flight. I'm gonna be stuck in Charles de Gaulle for like six fucking hours.

Because there's only so many flights that go from Paris to Yerevan, right? You're going real fucking Midwest. Yeah. And then he's like, your bag has been chosen for extra screening. I'm like, of course it has. Fine, pull my fucking three pairs of drawers out

and a pair of shoes and see that there's nothing in it and You know make me miss my fucking flight because up until now I had five minutes or whatever and now I have two I'm fucked somehow. I made my flight though. I get to your Avon they lose half of my bags The bags that they do bring are broken the wheels are individually snapped off like someone did it just out of pure anger. I will never fly through that fucking airport ever again. Um, oh, so like, uh, I have, you know, complaints about like fucking different airports on different levels. Schiphol airport in the Netherlands is like so confusing and it's like a fucking maze. Also, its baggage pickup is so painfully slow.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, the fucking Bucharest Airport is like really weird. Stuff is open at weird times. But I have a definitive ranking of every airport in London or in the surrounding area. So joint best is Stansted and Gatwick. They both have their own problems. I hate in Stansted how you get through the winding duty free

and then everything is just in a big circle. And like there's like hundreds of seats in the middle. So people are just sitting there looking at the screens and then like all the restaurants and bars around it gives me like huge sensory overload. Hate it. You have to fucking walk for ages to your plane. Gatwick has like can be like super congested. It's like they only put the flights up like fucking 20 minutes before it's going to close. Flown through Gatwick and that blew my mind. Yeah.

He's right. But they're both like really good airports. They're both very easy for me to get through. They're super close to where I live. So and they're well, they're not super close to where I live, but they're very easy. Like if I'm going to Stan said, I'll usually fly out after work because it's like 40 minutes from the studio. I literally go to Liverpool Street.

Super quick train got what I can get direct train near my house to Gatwick. Super easy. Heathrow haven't been through it, but I have heard that people have had like nightmare experiences with it. Heathrow is not great. I flew through Heathrow coming back home after the live shows in London. And much like Gatwick, they put where my flight was on the screen 20 minutes before the flight was to take off, which happened to be on the

complete opposite end of the airport. Then like London City Airport is tied with like Heathrow, because it's like it's not really a super useful airport. It's super small, so it's easy to get through. It's not really useful. The worst and everyone knows what I'm going to fucking say with this. The worst London airport is Luton. Luton airport fucking sucks so much.

It has terrible fucked vibes. Security is fucked. Duty free is fucked. Food is terrible. Getting to your flight is fucking really annoying. And like I've heard from people on the discord that like Bristol airport has very similar vibes to Luton. And because it's like Luton is like super busy in the morning and late at night because of like low cost flights.

Ah, the curse of every airport. Yeah. So then in the afternoon you have loads of families who are like, oh, I'm going to spend a little bit more to, you know, have avoid kind of the crowds. But then you've like screaming kids everywhere. And you know what? I don't blame the kids. It's not their fault. They're kids. What are you going to do? They're in an airport.

Well, I just the I like the fact that so you're going to hate this. So to get to Luton Airport from London, there is no direct train that goes to Luton. You have to like one help and oversight. Oh, no, no, no. Wait for this. You have to get a train to a terminal that is like 10 minutes away from the airport, then pay four pounds to get on a tram to go to Luton.

That takes like four minutes. Incredible. Yeah. And it's like there's there's no unless you're like driving to the airport. There's like or getting a bus. There's no direct way via train to fucking Luton Airport. You have to get this stupid tram. That is impressive. I do have to say I will give my sleeper

pick for my favorite airport to transit through, Warsaw Airport. And here's why, they don't give a fuck. Now, if you're transiting through Warsaw Airport to an EU country, that might be different, but I have transited through Warsaw multiple times going to Tbilisi and Yerevan. And if you're going to a non-EU country,

like now we don't even gotta look at your passport, your bags, nothing, just go. Yeah. So you can, if you're going to a non-EU country, you can make a transfer in the Warsaw airport in like 10 fucking minutes, assuming your flight lands on time, which I haven't had go wrong yet there. But like,

now unfortunately I live in the EU, so that is now gone for me. But yeah, like they don't look at your back. Like there's a whole non-EU line and an EU line for security. I'm, my, like my transfer time is very, it's like 30 minutes. And in a lot of airports, that's a fucking death sentence, right? So I'm running, I'm running my ass off. I get to the line, the non-EU line. I'm the only one there. There's just an old Polish man sitting there and he asked me, EU or non-EU?

And I pointed to the sign, I was like, non-EU, Tbilisi. He's like, go. Doesn't put my bags in an x-ray machine, not a fucking thing coming back from the UK. I was just like, hell yeah. I got to my gate in so much time, I could sit down and eat something first. Shout out to Warsaw airport and nothing else in Poland.

My sleeper hit of an airport is Nock Airport in the west of Ireland. An airport that is so small that you walk in, you like, there's, you walk in, there's like nothing in front of you. You go up the stairs, there's like a bar with a foosball table and like some pre-packed sandwiches. Now I will warn people. Apply one wet sandwich situation. So there's only like 10 flights out of knock every day, you have to pay 10 euro to actually go into the terminal.

Otherwise you have to sit outside? No, you literally have to fly. You have to pay 10 pounds or 10 euro. And they get you like you queue up to go through security and it's like it narrows to like single file to go through this hallway. And there's just someone in like a glass kiosk that you have to pay 10 euro for, like the upkeep of the airport or whatever. Excuse me, sir. Have you paid your rent for the terminal today? Yeah. And then you go through and there's like some hot food, some chairs. And it's like if you just have to go to security,

you can get from the front door to your plane if the plane is boarding in like five minutes. Fuck yeah. That's including security. Oh Tom, that's a podcast. You do another podcast so plug your other podcast. Uh, beneath the skin the show about the history of everything told through the history of tattooing, um, by the time this episode comes, we will have an episode about the history of the AIDS crisis and tattooing. And I will also be in Switzerland for the podcast. So cool stuff coming from that.

And listen to glue, listen to or watch alternatively on YouTube Glue Factory, a comedy podcast that has no theme, just jokes from some of our friends over on Trash Future. And this is the only show that I do. But if you think it's worth your time and money, consider supporting us on Patreon. You get episodes like this one early for five dollars. You can get our full catalog of of. I could take that again.

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