Posted on 04/15/2016 9:31:21 PM PDT by pboyington
Why do senior officers in the military always have a little dumb nickname on all their correspondence?
I think it's a requirement.
That is a scandal in and of itself.
Ray Mabus is turning the US Navy into his version of Star Fleet... A freak show masquerading as an armed service.
Yep, the good guys are either being retired for their politics and commitment, or leaving in disgust.
I suspect that the Poles did not chase these Russians away from our destroyer because they were not asked, not because they could not.
I was thinking strictly in terms of USN based fire power. Naval Operations Base Rota, Spain has a runway but I'm unsure about air assets there. Mainly it was an admin base, hospital, and support base, for ships operating in the MED Sea as well as the USN HQ for Spain.
A call to Poland for assistance would likely have to go through the Pentagon/State Dept boondoggle.
Oh it's much worse than Pearl Harbor. The International Piers are about 2 or so miles upstream past N.O.B. and any flagged ship can go there. There is also two large bridges and tunnels to consider. The Hampton Roads tunnel and Chesapeake Bay Bridge tunnel all ships much cross. Then there is Portsmouth home of Norfolk Naval Shipyards which can berth three carriers and also Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock company the one sole remaining carrier builder all in a nice tight circle.
Before anyone says loose lips to me ALL our enemies already know all this. A city map on line shows all they need. The NOB piers are well within sight of I-64 meaning you can see the carriers as you enter Norfolk.
We do or rather we used to have a second carrier homeport in Mayport, Florida that I think could hold two.
There's also pictures of shipyard tents and shacks sitting on flight decks of carriers berthed at N.O.B. This isn't just an Obama issue neither. It goes all the way back to Poppy starting policies and calling for cuts that never slowed down. Congress shares more responsibility though than anyone because they have the full say as to money allotted for what programs, how much, how many ships, how many active duty troops in all services and reservist etc. DEM majority or GOP majority didn't change one decimal point on anything.
One last thing many more critical Naval assets are in Norfolk. The U.S.N. Amphib Base and Oceana N.A.S. are there as well. At least the sub fleet is somewhat more scattered.
Yeah we had some issues. Sometime in maybe Oct 79 we lost 3MMR and an entire switchboard due to a feed water line rupture over the electrical switchboard. We still stayed out & finished our mission which was carrier quals for another air wing then went in for our scheduled year long overhaul.
Things were so bad we thought then that Navy offered critical ratings $15K and next rank to re-up. Fast forward to late 1982. I was back home and our local economy collapsed. Not even MickeyD hired. I tried to go back in and talked to a recruiter. I was a Machinist Mate. Recruiter couldn't offer me anything to come back in because they were meeting their billets. Two years later I joined the Army NG for a year and even kept my rank.
Did any ship you were on get to this point? This was pre-deployment USS America during the summer of 1993 conditions
The America needs constant attention. Commissioned in 1965, it is showing its age. A month before leaving Norfolk, a senior enlisted crew member complained to his congressman: The ship was operating on only two of its six electric generators, without radar and unable to pump fuel. This would be its third six-month cruise in three years, and without the standard 18 months at home for repairs, salt water and full steaming had taken their toll.
When she came home to NORVA from that deployment 7 months I think she had a bad Boiler Room explosion severe enough she went towed Cold Iron up to Portsmouth for a fast band-aid repair and another deployment which was her last.
Jimmy Carter's mess never got this bad. Two of Six generators meant primitive electrical services with Fire Pumps, lights, elevators maybe and likely only two of it's 10 Air Conditioning Units operational. It's simple. No A/C? No Avionics, No Operations or limited, due to electronics being very screwy if temps weren't maintained. I was in AC&R shop so I would know that. We usually had one or two chillers we were working on but we kept the critical spaces operational and that was with 9 when I was in. I signed for #10 being accepted in 1980.
Don't get me wrong Carter was a poor excuse for POTUS but he did inherit a royal screwed up mess as well. The Ford/Sec of Def Rummy tenure did it's damage also. Remember when if you wanted out all you had to do was walk off 31 days and report anywhere but back to your ship for an Admin DC? Carter did end that and his SECNAV eventually began to address discipline and morale issues. Small stuff yeah I know but Bosun Whistles, the Crackerjack dress blues, and retention began to be addressed.
The mess today is the cumulative damage of Poppy, Clinton, W, Obama, and all siting Secretaries of Defense under them. But most of all on Congress both parties. POTUS may be CIC but Congress has power to regulate, allot funding, and approve or fire secretaries as well as impeach POTUS. We are down to about 271 active ships. Carriers now sit idle with sometimes none deployed anywhere. We never got even close to that point.
Stennis and Truman might be deployed right now. Deployments means something from about 3-7 months long cruises such as South America, Persian Gulf, Med Sea, operations area. These are extended times away from homeport and not in and out for a few weeks carrier quals.
I was just a kid, but I can remember an older cousin, a jet engine mechanic who was at a Naval Air Station at that time, telling my dad that the day the word to begin restoring discipline came down the Station Commander purchased a dozen sledge hammers from a hardware store and sent out an order for malefactors to be identified and set to the task of using said sledgehammers to break up the concrete foundations left behind where a number of buildings had once stood. In my cousin's telling the difference in attitude and behavior was palpable within weeks.
I remember sometime in 1979 they started issuing Liberty Passes again. It had your name on it so you couldn’t borrow one LOL. The work center supervisor {senior enlisted in the shop} held them and handed them out at the end of the work day. Without it or a pier pass to take out trash etc you could not leave the ship. That was a great incentive especially when in port time was scarce such as sea work ups before deployment. Somebody figured out if you wanted men to act like sailors then treat them as such. Thus the prior long standing traditions were restored including a crackerjack uniform so you weren’t mistaken for an airline pilot LOL.
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