Posted on 04/25/2008 8:38:09 AM PDT by American Quilter
Carrier launches are astonishing events. The plane is moved to within what seems like a bowling alley's length of the bow. A blast shield larger than any government building driveway Khomeini-flipper rises behind the fighter jet, and the jet's twin engines are cranked to maximum thrust. A slot-car slot runs down the middle of the bowling alley. The powered-up jet is held at the end of its slot by a steel shear pin smaller than a V-8 can. When the shear pin shears the jet is unleashed and so is a steam catapult that hurls the plane down the slot, from 0 to 130 miles per hour in two seconds. And--if all goes well--the airplane is airborne. This is not a pilot taking off. This is a pilot as cat's eye marble pinched between boundless thumb and infinite forefinger of Heaven's own Wham-O slingshot.
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
Best description of a launch I have yet heard.
Khomeini flipper?
To say that an F-4 is coming back onto this heaving barbecue from out of the sky at a speed of 135 knots . . . that may be the truth on paper, but it doesn’t begin to get across the idea of what a man sees from the deck itself, because it perhaps creates the notion that the plane is gliding in. On the deck one knows different! As the aircraft comes closer and the carrier heaves on into the waves and the plane’s speed does not diminish—one experiences a neural alarm he has never in his wildest fears imagined before: This is not an airplane coming toward me, it’s a brick, and it is not gliding, it’s falling, a fifty-thousand-pound brick, headed not for a stripe on the deck, but for me . . .— Tom Wolfe, The Truest Sport: Jousting with Sam and Charlie.
While on patrol once, I had the Kitty Kawk in the scope during flight operations.
One submarine with a single torpedo and shutdown an entire moving airport.
There are only two types of vessels in the Navy.
Submarines, and targets.
In this never-never land a couple of tinhorn Second City shysters--who, put together, don't have the life experience of the lowest ranking gob-with-a-swab cleaning a head on the Big Stick--presume to run for president of the United States. They're not just running against the hero John McCain, they're running against heroism itself and against almost everything about America that ought to be conserved.
got news for you buddy.......you were targeted long before the periscope look.......
This refers to the heavy steel wall that rises out of the road at a 90-degree angle just past the entry point on many military bases, to prevent unauthorized vehicles from making it onto the base. If you blow past the gate guard, he hits a button to bring up the barrier. You wouldn't want to hit it!
Oh, thanks! Just what a mom with a daughter on a carrier on deployment likes to read! lol :~( j/k
O’Rourke makes some devastating observations about Hillary and Obama and their unfitness for the presidency—I definitely recommend everyone read to the end of the article.
Wanna bet? I have the battle efficiency ribbons to show you are wrong.
And your point is...what?
That we should get rid of surface ships?
McCain could hardly escape understanding the limits of something huge but hermetic, like a government is, and packed with a madding crowd. It requires organization, needs hierarchies, demands meritocracy, insists upon delegation of authority. An intricate, time-tested system replete with checks and balances is not a plaything to be moved around in a doll house of ideology. It is not a toy bunny serving imaginary sweets at a make-believe political tea party. The captain commands, but his whims do not. He answers to the nation.
Just so, and even better:
A strange flight it is--from the hard and fast reality of a floating island to the fantasy world of American solid ground. In this never-never land a couple of tinhorn Second City shysters--who, put together, don't have the life experience of the lowest ranking gob-with-a-swab cleaning a head on the Big Stick--presume to run for president of the United States. They're not just running against the hero John McCain, they're running against heroism itself and against almost everything about America that ought to be conserved.
I honestly can't add anything to that. BTT.
That was the money quote, all right!
Gotta love P.J., he so descriptively cuts through the crap...
and I have time in CIC of a carrier to blow your little boat out of the water at any time i please....
A marine guard at Cherry Point told me that it will stop a tractor-trailer going 50+mph dead in its tracks, just like the driver will be.
Ping! Thought you guys would enjoy this article. Interesting in itself, plus some devastating observations about Hillary and Obama and their unfitness for the presidency.
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