I hope we can help the Russians and Japanese with some of their ship losses, too.
It's almost like a last outpost of chivalry. When Kursk blew up due to the stupidity of Russia's civilian and military leaders, one American submariner said he'd happily blow their sub out of the water in a war, but would risk his life to save his brother submariners in a peacetime accident.
If their leaders hadn't been such paranoid buttheads, they might have saved the few that survived the initial explosion of their half-baked "wonder weapon".
Well said. My son and I attended a memorial services on the USS Pampanito at San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf. There were a lot of us there, and we all felt the same way.
Roger that.
Its also a confirmation of a time when we had more honorable enemies. I won't deny that the Japanese committed horrific acts and certifiable war crimes. But as a culture they understood honor. Quite unlike our current enemy, that has no honor.
More to the point: The Soviet Navy was an undeniably honorable adversary. We had our differences, and the "cold" war was certainly hotter than it got press about. But even when the CIA recovered remains from the Glomar visit(s) to lost Soviet subs, we gave the lost Soviet sailors a full "Soviet" funeral service at sea.
It wasn't about politics, it was about the bond between sailors, and the honor of respecting that history.
I have no doubt that had the situation been reversed (and it may well have been) that the Soviet sailors would have done the same for us.
I think one moment that encapsulated the 20th century, maybe more than any other moment, was that moment when Gorbachev put his hand on President Reagan's casket in Washington DC. He paid his respects to Ronald Reagan, in a way that showed more class than I've ever seen between any such bitter adversaries before in the history of mankind.
Would that we had such honorable adversaries now.