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Articles like that one are typical of accounts of stories like this. They emphasize the absurdity or perceived stupidity. But this misses the key astronomical aspect here: Venus is shockiungly bright in daylight. Many authors and readers, in fact, assume that the stories are about Venus at night, which is a very different animal.

The link you found from "americaisweird.com" at least manages not to confuse two distinct incidents. A few days back, Dave W. posted a link to an article from "iflscience.com" (for anyone unfamiliar with the name, that "IFLscience" is a shorthand for "I f--ing love science"). That article began by talking about USS New York in 1945 then mixed in the story of USS Langley in 1941 without recognizing that they were separate incidents. 

There's a little more on the Venus incident aboard USS New York here: http://digicom.bpl.lib.me.us/ww_reg_his/162. The date isn't clear but may have been around February 1, 1945 while sailing mid-Pacific. And yes, Venus was very bright at that time. Since the captain was reportedly practicing his golf swing on a bridge wing, this was another case in daylight very similar to the case of USS Langley a little over three years earlier, though the crew of USS New York did not have the excuse of the heightened alert the day after Pearl Harbor. The two vessels did share one other trait: they were both old, nearly obsolete ships. "New York" had been launched in 1912.

Other incidents could have occurred during that war. Inferior conjunctions of Venus happen every 1.6 years (584 days). The times of maximum daylight visibilty are a month or two before inferior conjunction and similarly after. There was a conjunction on Feb 2, 1942, another on about Sep 9, 1943, followed by Apr 15, 1945, and so on. Needless to say, there have been other wars! Was there something about the nature of war in the 1940s that made these events more likely or more worthy of being reported? In that decade recently invented aerial warfare combined with low-quality radar might have been key ingredients...

Frank Reed