Posted on 04/04/2013 1:06:12 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
The commanding officer and three crewmembers aboard a U.S. Navy minesweeper have been relieved of their duties amid an investigation into how the $300 million ship got stuck on a reef near the Philippines and had to be scuttled.
The USS Guardian became stuck on a reef in the Tubbataha National Marine Park, a World Heritage Site in the Sulu Sea some 400 miles southeast of Manila in January.
The Navy said in a statement that the officer and crewmembers were relieved because the ship's grounding did not comply with its navigation procedures and accountability standards.
Last week, the Navy chopped the ship up into sections and removed it, turning a valuable ship into scrap metal.
“We're paid to make sure that both the crew and that ship comes through harm’s way alright,” said Joe Sestak, a former Democrat Congressman from Pennsylvania and retired three-star admiral. “A mistake was made here.”
On Sunday, workers removed the last major part of the ship, and experts there are now assessing possible damage to the reef. Meanwhile, Navy investigators want to know what went wrong on Jan. 17. Initially the ship sustained minor damage, but before it could be towed off the reef, waves pushed the hull further onto the coral.
The guardian is one of only eight sweepers in the U.S. fleet. So far, the Navy blames faulty navigational maps for causing the ship to run aground. Its captain, Mark Rice, took command of the ship just three months before the accident.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
first MCM in the Seventh Fleet to receive the Women-at-Sea modification
Sestak has no room to talk. He’s one of the Perfumed Princes of the Pentagon who tranformed our once feared and incomparable navy into “a globsl force for good.” Basically our whole military has been castrated and dumbed down.
The Navy is good at eating their own.... And since they are officially blaming bad maps the Navy supplied the ship, well then...
The DESTRUCTION of MY United States Navy BEGAN w/ the passage of the 1986 Goldwater/Nicols DoD “Re-Organization” Act. My Navy began to be “Air-Forceized” then.
Ships have been getting stuck on reefs for thousands of years, nothing new here.
It was a minesweeper. A wood and fiberglass minesweeper. It did not “become scrap metal”, it became trash.
Charts. Not maps.
My guess is they could have pulled it successfully off the reef, but it would have damaged the coral, and in our new world, the Navy would rather sacrifice millions of dollars of equipment than “harm the environment”.
Because we don’t use bayonets or horses - or minesweepers.
—IIRC, that was one of the excuses when it happened—
There was no good reason to not tow it off the reef. The “damage” was done and scraping over it again would not cause any more significant “damage”. Thank the braindead greenies and morons in command. As if coral won’t grow back.
They could have even bolted a few space shuttle solid rocket boosters to it and gently lifted it off the reef and out to sea.
(Yeah, I know .. I made it up)
A retired Two Star, he got the boot before he had enough time in Grade to keep three.
Or run a pipe to the White House and let O'Bozo fill it with hot air.
“A wood and fiberglass minesweeper.” I was wondering about that. My old man was on a mine sweeper in WWII - not even sure they had fiberglass then. One of his sister-ships ended up on a reef right after the war - but that was due to a huge typhoon that sank/grounded hundreds of ships.
Or unload everything possible, add some air bags to lift it higher in the water, and float it off.
And once you drag it off the reef and the ship sinks because the whole hull is shredded, what then?
The ship had been forced broadside onto the reef by the wave action and the whole hull was stove it. Whether you pull it off just to watch it sink or dismantle it in place and salvage what you can the ship is still history.
The hulls of WWII Minesweepers were 100% wood. There was steel/iron/aluminum above decks but the hulls were 100% wood.
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