The USS Guam LPH9 (now a corral reef) lost men aboard a launch on a med cruise.
Heck. Everyone knows the military is not only far from perfect, it is frequently stupid and nearly always inefficient. But warfighting organizations by their very nature are not often efficient, they are by nature wasteful and destructive, because they are supposed to be destructive.
I often think back to stupidity, and I remember one night (Barcelona maybe) where men were lined up in the pouring rain on Fleet Landing, drunk and unruly because they were having trouble running the liberty launches due to high seas.
We went out, launches were filled I am certain far beyond any safe limit (packed in like sardines) as it poured rain and the boat pitched, yawed and rolled, going around and around waiting to approach the platform at the stern of the carrier.
Drunk men peeing over the side, barfing, yelling “F**K THE SHORE PATROL!” (As I saw my buddy strip off his Shore Patrol armband), fights breaking out, all that. They had some canvas coverings, and the water would pour off them in waterfalls onto anyone unlucky enough to be stuck in that opening between them.
When we finally approached the platform, it was crazy. They didn’t tie up to it, but simply maneuvered next to it, as a few drunk sailors leaped from the launch onto the platform. Bang, bang, bang, they would all jump in a short interval as people on the boat and the platform exhorted them onward.
Then, the sea would rocket the boat up where you were looking five feet down at the platform, then plummet down until you were looking five feet up at it, and would go through several iterations of this, until by chance, the platform and the launch were roughly on level with each other, and three or four drunk sailors would leap from the launch to the platform, bang, bang, bang, then the boat would heave up and down again, and the cycle would repeat itself.
It was wild. Drunk sailors were landing on the platform after jumping in a wide variety of stumbles as people would try to catch them.
I was gritting my teeth and sweating, I had to go so badly I was gripping my member with a death grip in my free hand to keep from going in my trousers.
The point is...it had to be one of the stupidest things, even in my drunken state, that I have ever seen. What possessed ANYONE in charge to try to get those launches out to the ship? They should have simply made us all wait there on Fleet Landing, in the rain, if need be.
It amazes me nobody fell in between the platform and launch to be crushed.
But that is the way things happen sometimes in the military. Sometimes people simply make bad decisions. People are tired. People are lazy. People cut corners.
And sometimes people get killed because of it. And that is, with nearly 100% certainty what is going on with this spate of mishaps involving our ships. It isn’t some asinine hacking.
One ship had lost a launch and men about a year prior to when we about got hit I couldn't remember the name of the ship except carrier stuck out in my mind. Liberty Launches were dangerous. Most persons boarded at the deckhouse. The boat crew boarded going down a Jacobs Ladder and praying a swell didn't bring it crashing down on your skull.