The Indians are not totally inexperienced in this area. They've been running this ship since the mid-80s. I think what might really bite them in the butt is the expense of a full size CV, as you mentioned.
INS Viraat (ex-HMS Hermes).
Posted on 05/24/2008 7:38:15 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
I'm not sure it's appropriate to call 50,000+ men "several thousand."
Of the initial 45,000 or so captured by the Japs, 40,000 immediately joined the Indian Traitor Army.
I think it was over 50000 in all. 50000 was the number that fought in the East Asian theatre alone. Many more thousand fought in the African theatre and some in the European trenches if I remember reading it right.
40,000 joining the the INA is also an unlikely number, but I dont have data to challenge it today :)
Bump
Surely not just for a coastal defense? Does it need a blue-water navy?
Now (Indian)Navy wants Super Hornets too
After decommissioning, carrier’s eventual fate unknown (Kitty Hawk)
YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE — Nobody likes moving day — the packing, the lifting and, at day’s end, the echoing of an empty home.
Now, imagine emptying out an 80,000-ton ship with 2,550 compartments. It makes for an awful lot of refrigerators to unplug.
The crew aboard the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk already is preparing for such a historic move, one that will end the ship’s 47-year career in the U.S. Navy.
As the carrier sails for Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, sailors will begin going through 19-point checklists to make sure the proper items get unplugged, collected and stored before the ship drops anchor in July at Bremerton, Wash. About 430 crewmembers will stay with the ship over the following few months, before the official decommissioning in January, the Navy said last week.
From there, the carrier’s eventual fate remains unknown.
A group in North Carolina wants it for a museum, homage to CV-63’s namesake location in the state. Congress this month talked about keeping the Kitty Hawk in ready-reserve status during the next few years.
After decommissioning, the carrier will be assigned to the Navy’s inactive ship inventory. The secretary of the Navy will make the “ultimate decision on disposition,” Navy Lt. Clay Doss said in an e-mail to Stars and Stripes.
Moving-day preparations already are under way, even as sailors peel off to different assignments.
Chief Petty Officer Elison Talabong, an aviation ordnance specialist, said the carrier’s operational tempo, advancing age and shrinking crew means everyone does more with less.
“It’s challenging. We have the same mission — just with reduced personnel,” Talabong said last week.
His department is currently down about 30 people. “So we all take jobs other than our primary duties,” he said.
Once in Bremerton, the ship will get a full-scale shuttering that will take months.
Last year’s decommissioning of the USS John F. Kennedy called for the equivalent of 26,000 workdays, according to Doss. The work included emptying and cleaning all fuel oil tanks, deactivating and covering catapult troughs, deactivating and securing aircraft and weapons elevators, cleaning the ship’s piping system, and rigging for tow, Doss said.
Eventually, “Big John” was towed to a Navy facility in Philadelphia, where it’s held for safe stowage, Doss said.
The Kitty Hawk could end up in a similar mothball stage, at least for the near future. But earlier this month, the House Armed Services Committee approved paying for a study to determine the costs of reactivating the Kitty Hawk and the Kennedy, if needed.
A group in Wilmington, N.C., however, would like to claim the Kitty Hawk for public view.
Retired Navy Capt. Wilbur Jones is part of a statewide group, the Wilmington Kitty Hawk Concept Team, that plans to ask the Navy’s permission to turn the ship into a museum. Jones said the process could take five to seven years, and the team would have to hire a museum consultant and raise money for the project.
The group is in the process of filing for nonprofit tax status, is looking for a possible site, and hopes to hire a chairman soon, Jones said in an e-mail to Stripes.
“The most optimistic projection would have the ship arrive here in 2011-12,” Jones said. “The Navy’s detailed bureaucratic application process is cumbersome but can be overcome.”
Why does India need a carrier the size of the Kitty Hawk?
Surely not just for a coastal defense? Does it need a blue-water navy?
It would only be operational for about 6 months or less. The skills needed to maintain a full sized
carrier are not learned overnight,much less operate it.
And it ain’t cheap either.
Ask the Soviets.
Or the Brits.
Jack
Sounds reasonable.
The MMR's would have to be overhauled. If we pay for that we may as well keep it for ourselves. Only one carrier yard in the USA maybe two are capable of doing such a feat correctly both are in Norfolk area and both are busy.
It's just too big a risk. It can't be put back to sea without the MMR's being rebuilt. The system is 50 years old. A leak in the steam piping down in the hole or up in the CATS the size of a #2 pencil lead will dismember you. She was taken out of service for good reasons.
Ping list ping.
India's whole strategy is watch the game play out while cussing us out, the way they did during the Japanese war crimes trials and the Korean War. There is this essential complacency among indophiles about India's long term territorial ambitions that staggers the mind. We don't know anything about these ambitions. India simply hasn't been strong enough. I think we should bide our time before handing out freebies.
The Indians are not totally inexperienced in this area. They've been running this ship since the mid-80s. I think what might really bite them in the butt is the expense of a full size CV, as you mentioned.
INS Viraat (ex-HMS Hermes).
You’re right about the subjugation part. After the war, the Brits expected to walk right back in as masters of India, etc. I would suggest, however, that those noble and patriotic Indians of the INA just hadn’t had a chance to observe the Imperial Japanese at close range.
Yes. That’s why immigration from India to the UK should never have been allowed, and should in fact be reversed. Enock Powell understood this. The Indians (and Pakistanis) were never “British”, and should never have expected to be treated the same as British, or of British descent.
I should be careful about the subjugation schtick. The USA used to be full of Red Indians. The British left India in far better shape than the US left the Indigenous Indians.
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