Posted on 07/18/2016 5:12:43 PM PDT by Mariner
The United States Navy and its allies recently laid siege to a retired frigate in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It was all part of a SINKEX, or sinking exercise, that tested the missiles and big guns of modern navies against an actual warship.
Every two years, as part of the multinational Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercises, the US Navy tows a retired warship out to sea. Then the U.S. military, along with allied forces, blow it to smithereens.
The USS Thach was an Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate. Commissioned in 1979, it was named after Jimmy Thach, a World War II F4F Wildcat pilot who invented the famous "Thach Weave" fighter formation to counter the Japanese Zero fighter.
(Excerpt) Read more at popularmechanics.com ...
Which Adams class boat were you on ? Me: DDG-7 - Henry B Wilson 79-84, B Division - 1 Fireroom
What do you make of the fact...there were no armed weapons, bombs, etc..or fuel on the ship? IOW...it would have blown up..quite fast.
That said...I don't quite understand either...why get rid of a seemingly functional ship..that seemingly could be re-fitted.
Hoel DDG-13, 71-72, missile fire control radar
Hey! I was on the Kennedy too, and...I thought she went faster than that!
My berth was right under the wires, and I remember one of the crossings we made across the Atlantic at high speed...I woke up, and the whole compartment was vibrating as the screws, at a frequency that my memory tells me was about 200 times a minute, was going “WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM”
It was wild. The ship was hauling ass across the Atlantic (Don’t know why, maybe they were just stretching her legs) so I got up and went down to the fantail, and there was a mountain of white water.
VERY impressive! (BTW, when were you on? I was on 1976 to 1979...attached airing, VA-46)
Sad to see. The Thach was one of the ships in the battle group during my first WESTPAC.
IF that’s the best we can do, wow, sad.
Why couldn’t they refit these for domestic littoral duty?
I think those older Perry class FFGs were getting tough to maintain. There were parts issues. I got a chance to go on one when it visited Boston, and in talking to some of the guys it sounded like the vessel was somewhat compromised in its seaworthiness. It sounded like it was good for interdiction duty over in the Persian Gulf, but...going across the Atlantic sounded like an adventure. It had its missiles removed, had no launcher, as I recall. (This was a while back) He said they couldn’t be upgraded to the SM2, and the SM1 was compromised, they couldn’t maintain the missiles due to (IIRC) the actual propellant section of the missile wasn’t being produced any more, so they just pulled the entire thing out. It had no missiles. No Harpoons or SM1 missiles, as I recall.
So, to me, the vessel seemed compromised. He said they did interdiction duty, and the guys were ribbing the Chief about a time they had to sink some half sunken Iranian aluminum fishing boat because it was a navigation hazard, and...they simply couldn’t sink it! They gleefully told the story while the Chief fidgeted good naturedly, I got the impression he thought it was kind of funny after the fact, but...the thing wouldn’t sink. They filled it full of holes with their twin .50s, then turned their cannon on it, and finally the CIWS, and eventually it sank.
See my response above, I think they were getting diminishing returns on the maintenance costs they were expending to keep them running. It happens like that with ships...
Seems reasonable.....I figure I don’t know all the details until I read all the H & P’s
I have always found this aspect of warships interesting...we kept a lot of ships from WWII running for decades, but eventually they got to the point where they were decrepit.
I spent a few weeks on the USS Lexington back in the Seventies doing training, and did a short deployment on the FDR, and both of those ships were somewhat miserable.
On the Lexington, it was awful. The compartment they had me sleeping in was hotter than Hell, and I was inhaling bunker fuel fumes the entire time. It was awful, I slept fitfully the entire time there, and had the taste of that damn fuel in my mouth the entire time.
Funny. Just getting a whiff of that fuel now brings me right back to that period. I think of all those sailors serving in the Sixties and Seventies on some of those old warships, and I wondered what it was like on them, if they had that same air of..being worn out and uncomfortable.
Well, Obama’s new Admiralette (his vice CNO) will soon put a stop to that:
How does one get 7 rows of ribbons, without any combat? Oh, she showed up for work most of the time (4 rows), is female (2.5 rows), and possibly a minority (.5 rows). Did I get that right?
Admiral Michelle Howard, USN, is not in command of the US Navy, however, she was recently promoted to Vice Chief of Naval Operations, second in command to the CNO. The selection process leading to her promotion to 4 star rank and her current position, is rather unique in a peace time US Navy. The supposed plan is to eventually promote her to Chief of Naval Operations.
Admiral Howard had command of only one non-capital ship, the USS Rushmore (LSD-47), when she was promoted to Flag rank, which was unique. She eventually received orders as the Senior Military Assistant to the Secretary of the Navy, thru January 2009. It then appears that Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus mentored her thru one senior billet after another, by-passing other highly qualified combat-trained, more senior Flag Officers. During the process, she received orders to the proper Command and Staff Colleges, in order to prepare her for each new command assignment, Mabus’ careful guidance led her to her current billet.
In the last 7 years, Obama has modified the selection process for Flag and General Officer, by ensuring the potential selectee’s compliance with his ‘Social Experiment On Diversity’, as a condition for whether an officer will be considered for promotion to Admiral or General.
NOTE: Over the last 7 years, Obama has relieved over 250 highly qualified and combat-trained Flag, General, and Senior Officers; some should have been relieved for cause, but many more were doing a superb job when they were summarily relieved.
“I was on the Kennedy (CVA-67) and I know for a fact she would do 32 knots. A frigate needs to be faster than that.”
A carrier can run off and leave escorts in the dust. Its a well known fact of naval hull design, longer the waterline, the faster it can go.
No escort is going to keep up with a carrier at flank speed. On 9/11 at least one carrier hit the gas and headed towards the Persian Gulf as fast as possible, leaving the escorts to catch up as they could.
And don’t act like an LCS could do it, it’s high top speed is only for a short dash. And the USN had to waive damage control standards to get it into the fleet.
“I heard that an Iraqi anti-ship missie was guiding on the Wisconsin but
a Royal Navy destroyer shot it down. Like, to see a corroboration”
modern anti ship missiles couldn’t cope with the Wisconsin. They are designed for thin skinned modern warships that are essentially not armored at all. The dreaded exocet of the Falklands and the tanker war world barely scorch an old battle wagon.
Those were taken down by armor piercing bombs and shells that aren’t around today.
Forgive my lack of knowledge on the subject, but is a SinkEx really necessary? We already know intimately what the munitions used against this frigate can do. Why do it again?
Why not scrap her, recycle her, sell her, donate her to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute? Sure, maybe she becomes a marine habitat for fish, even coral, but this still seems wasteful as hell...
Seems like the missiles kept hitting above the waterline. The submarine looked like it missed its mark too.
The U.S. Navy had a large frigate fleet because they were tasked with having to get large convoys of ships to Europe in the event of a Soviet invasion and frigates were the perfect platform. When the Soviet Union went away a large reason for the frigate fleet went away.
Because they are fun. You spend years in the military doing routine tasks and every so often you actually get a chance to shoot off a missile, fire the cannon, and blow the crap out of something. It's a big morale booster.
If Iraq had his the Wisconsin with an Exocet or similar missile then the only proper response for the Damage Control officer would have been to send out a seaman apprentice to sweep up the fragments and paint over the scorch mark.
They're 40 years old for one reason. Ships wear out.
What combat decorations did her boss have?
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