Posted on 05/19/2010 3:05:57 AM PDT by ErnstStavroBlofeld
USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) departed Naval Air Station North Island for sea trials May 18.
The event marks the first time that Ronald Reagan has been underway since Oct. 21, 2009, when it completed its fourth deployment in four years. The three-time Battle "E" award-winning carrier is concluding a six-month planned incremental availability (PIA), a scheduled maintenance period designed to upgrade ship's systems and quality of life for its Sailors. Sea trials allow these systems to be tested and necessary quality checks to be performed.
Upon successful completion of sea trials, Ronald Reagan's PIA will officially conclude and the ship will rejoin the operational fleet.
For more news from USS Ronald Reagan - Ronald Reagan Strike Group, visit www.reagan.navy.
(Excerpt) Read more at navy.mil ...
quality of life????? what a joke...true story, I was on the Kennedy, and we were having those breaded fried fish square thingies for dinner...got mine, sat down and tried to put a fork in it...fork would not penetrate the breading....tried a knife, knife would not penetrate the breading...picked it up and tried to break it in half, it would not break...finally grabbed it with both hands, and smashed it against the side of the table, and it broke in half...there was nothing inside, it was just breading fried to a concrete like finish....
John F Kennedy has some serious problems. The ship was so poorly maintained that the CO was pretty much drummed out of the navy and the ship was retired earlier than expected. I expect that the problems started quite a bit earlier than that.
Quality of life on board US Navy ships is much better than it used to be as far as ship's structure and facilities.
I was on her way back in the 70’s........CO was a tough bastard, who started out as an e-1...he ate what the men ate, and would not hesitate to throw a cook in the brig...this captain went on to become a vice admiral..now when I was on the forrestal, it was a whole different ballgame...that ship was disgusting, filthy, chow halls closed due to health issues...
OK then . before my time. My first trip to her was in the early 90’s. (Thanks for your service BTW)
I wish I had the quality of life today’s sailors have. I served 20 years in the nuclear submarine Navy (retired in 1984) in very tight quarters, but the food was passable most of the time.
ping
I was on JFK in ‘74-’76 and the food wasn’t any better. She was fairly new then but even then maintenance was deferred. Just slap some paint on it and it will go away.
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Yeah, back in Carter’s Navy, there wasn’t diddly squat for equipment, maintenance or troops and you didn’t want ANYTHING to look too good or some Sandcrab would haul it off for a Head Start School playtoy.
I was in a Reserve unit that had a P-2V (corroded main spars) that we’d just about spitshined. Except for any more than taxi-around-the-ramp-at-minimum-speed-only, absolutely everything in that bird was as close to 4.0 as we could make it, and every shop in the squadron was bustin’ it to get 4.1.
Got the orders to strip it and ship it (No Sh**) to a Head Start School, and I think that Squadron dropped fifteen percent of its sailors the first month.
Don’t know about after that, ‘cause I was outta there a couple of weeks later.
Don’t blame you. When I got my re-enlistment chat I told tem they were wasting their time. I was accepted to college nad adios. There was no way I was spemding four more years in the Firerooms-I was in 2MMR on JFK as a BT- and watch them wire and glue a 1200psi steam plant together while we added new paint to the overhead.
I’ve always called those days my Ten Million Dollar Experience:
Wouldn’t take a million bucks for the people I met and worked with or the places I saw and things I did. Absolutely wouldn’t take the other nine million to do it again.
Could not agree more! If they offered m ten million I still don’t think I would do it again. But at that time, at 18 and knowing everything, I just knew it would be an adventure and actually believed my recruiter- who told me i would be an AT but ended up a BT-only one letter off!
I knew a bunch of AT’s who would have swapped some of their flightdeck adventures for a bit of that blackshoe duty.
I believe the guy’s name was Dunleavy. He was one heckova good guy.
No, the guy was Captain Jerry O Tuttle, SLUF (short little ugly f***er) is what he called hiself...when we left norfolk, he came over the speaker and announced, “ I have a brig, I keep it full”...and boy, he meant it...but we had the best food ( most of the time anyway )
Well, I know I wouldn’t have minded some time on deck. I know that both jobs had good and bad times. I would have liked some of the three section duty at sea or in port. We never had it we were so undermanned. But at least we had all the fresh water we could use!
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