The brothers on board Juneau; from left to right: Joseph, Francis, Albert, Madison and George Sullivan
Could it be a case of drunk driving?! /sarc
I'd rather allide with a grill.
ELAINE: You see, I don't think it is a Catholic joke. I think it's more of a Raquel Welch joke. What was it? No, I said hand me the buoys. (Laughing) Bouys!
In an era with fewer and more expensive ships, perfection is expected by the brass. That’s foolish and doomed to fail, but that’s the way it is. The great naval commanders in our history couldn’t make it as officers today. They’d be drummed out for foolishness like this.There will be no more Arleigh Burkes beaching their destroyers on purpose in the future of this Navy.
Oops.
Busted. He’ll never make admiral. Time to retire.
he can’t be bothered with a buoy when there are missing strawberries!
Rocks and shoals...
Isn’t that ship also a high profile command not just any Commander would get?
Man, it sure doesn’t take much to destroy a military career.
Well, we will just make him a U.S. Senator.
Didn’t Halsey run his DD aground before WW2? His career survived that I think.
I read from www.StrategyPage.com that the rate of Navy Captains being relieved of command was at an all time high....maybe due to “zipper failure”.
However, this hold nothing compared to the grounding of the USS Missouri at Hampton Roads back in 1950.
Captain Brown, her new CO, was taking her out to sea for only the second time. As they were heading down the channel, Capt. Brown increased speed to 15 knots, which was exceedingly fast for that area, even more so for a ship that size. When he gave the command to increase speed, one of the officers opined that it was a little fast for that area, and the Captain simply issued the command.
So, the 57,000 ton battleship was cruising through shallow water with a new captain at high speed. When the ship went to the wrong side of a channel marker, the two officers down in the chart room looked out the porthole and seeing they were in the wrong place on the wrong side, did a collective "Huh?"
Up on the bridge, there were a variety of people ranging from Quartermasters to the XO running around waving their arms and trying to convince the Captain the ship was in peril, but the Captain did not believe any of them.
As the ship entered the shoal, the bottom was very muddy, extremely slick and sloped very gently and gradually. As a result, the battleship ran aground doing 15 knots, and nobody on the ship even knew the ship was aground, so slick was the mud, so gradual was the burrowing, so gentle was the incline, that the ship very nearly came to a complete halt, and the first indication that the ship was aground was the rising temperatures in engineering as intake valves became clogged.
To make things even worse, she had been run aground at an extremely unusual high tide. It couldn't have been worse. They ended up offloading EVERYTHING from the ship (that must have been one hell of an Alpha party) fuel, ammo, food, anything that could be moved. They used sixteen tugs, four on each side alternatively rocking her side to side, four at the bow and four astern. They also had divers in hard suits underwater with fire hoses spraying jets of water trying to break the suction of the gooey mud. Eventually, they got her free a couple of weeks later.
Some Air Force or Army pilots got into hot water for a stunt they pulled. This happened in full view of a busy road, so there were people and reporters all the time, and a new helicopter hovered over the bow of the stranded ship, lowering a sign on a rope that said "Need a lift?" or something like that. Unfortunately, a reporter happened to be nearby and snapped a picture which ended up in the newspaper. The authorities were not amused...:)
(on this one below, note how far out of the water her stern is! She got 'grounded good'!)
I live in Cedar Falls, IA, adjacent to Waterloo, where the Sullivans were from. They have a big convention center named for them here, as well as a full military museum, with the history of the Sullivans as its’ centerpiece, along with a P-51D Mustang dangling from the ceiling of the place.