Not meaning to derail the topic but reading that made me think some of what the Chinese are saying might be applied to the condition of our medical “care” system. It is the most expensive on the planet but otherwise a crumbling shadow of what it should and could be because of political corruption and a distortion of purpose. The fact that the “service providers” (Navy industry or medical industry) have grown so fat and so far removed from accountability while living the lives of royals is either a contributing factor or a symptom - or both.
Our Supreme Cheeto’s fascination with generals and admirals will only make things worse as they feather their nests in the shadow of his hero worshiping and drum beating. Short of a profound change in military management and oversight of defense contractors nothing will change. Eisenhower got it right, he warned us but we wouldn’t listen.
And I say that as a SWO who retired in 1993, was trained as a deck watch stander in the early 1970s by really good, really demanding officers and senior enlisted, who used the radian rule every day (and still does), and who had no trouble with any of the seamanshhip, stability, ROR, or navigation modules on the exams for my original Chief Mates license (after I learned The Sailings).
I guess I was just fortunate to be trained, and guided, as I was. I grieve for what is no longer there.
Yes, I always found it quite exceptional that especially he, as an ex army man and General, warned us against the ‘military industrial complex’. He must have known much more of course but was probably not at liberty to say more at his farewell speech.
Later on the deregulating forces sprung up and spread like wild fire adding to the destabilization of the system. The ‘Fat Leonard’ thing is, I think, only a tiny incident in the sea of unwanted connections between the military and the industry.
Or the Essex, when she hit the oiler she was taking on fuel from.
Apparently the XO was shouting to “watch the stern!” in from the bridge wing at the OOD, but gave no actual rudder commands or guidance. Then of course they swung their stern straight into the oiler.
Not at all. The only time you use their names is in correspondence.
Day-to-day conversations you call them “Captain” or “XO”. Some ships will refer to their CO as “Skipper”. And sometimes you call them “Sir.”
Even in Deck Logs, you use CO or XO (except at the change of command, the full name of the new CO is listed in the Deck Log as having relieved the outgoing CO. Then that deck log is closed and signed by the outgoing CO).
Slightly different subject, I have been scouring the web to find a condolence book to sign, for both Fitzgerald and McCain lost crew members. I don’t live in the US but in Europe, I have tried the local US Embassy but as yet no condolence book opened. Can anyone help?
In transiting situations these Navy ships are not manning CIC, they can’t be. They have 3 radars capable of ‘seeing’ those merchantmen. The surface search radar even has a repeater on the bridge and it has Furuno components… tech that can pick up birds! A vessel so equipped must maintain a proper radar watch. If the plan is that the repeater on the bridge relieves the responsibility of manning CIC then the repeater on the bridge requires a dedicated watchstander… just as a helmsman does not qualify as a lookout, using the OOD as the radar watch is irresponsible. This is all besides the fact that we had dedicated port and starboard lookouts. Every target on radar was relayed to the lookout for visual confirmation or their heads-up. All of those data points that you see on the verbose version of an AIS display, we calculated all of that by hand at the top of every minute, for every target until they were either resolved to be DIW, stationary or clear of us. Info on targets of interest were relayed to the bridge at suitable increments on the 1MC. Nothing ever got anywhere near us without fully knowledge of the watch, Nothing, Ever.
I was on 3 auxillaries during my 5 years on the Navy, 250 to 580ft. We never had a radarman or sonarman assigned, they were all on ships of the line, Gulf of Tonkin. I was an electronics technician but my watch station was a ‘nav’ watch in CIC. We had a 1/4MW surface search radar. '50’s vintage, it had 28 knobs and switches, nothing automatic. Once you became one with the radar you could do anything with it. Watch passenger planes take off from HNL and track them over 100 nm towards the mainland from Lahaina Lake. Pick up a submarine’s periscope long enough to compute her course… more than once. Spot wooden masts 15nm away DIW in the Alenuihaha Channel and tow them back to Hilo… more than once. So, from my perspective, I have no concept of how these M-o-W allow any cargo vessel get anywhere near them, let alone collide with them. That this situation exists aboard these warships constitutes nothing short of gross negligence.
That’s a mighty strong and prejudicial statement for USCG-GM2 to make with so little information. (You may one day wish you’d reserved judgement, gunner.) What strikes me most is the similarity of this incident with that of the Fitz. Both struck basically amidship on the starboard side by significantly larger and ostensibly slower vessels. Even the damage is nearly identical. The similarity is just to suspicious to suggest simple incompetence, laziness and lousy sailoring (offensive in the extreme). Some people are investigating the possibility of hacking, but that doesn’t entirely answer the mail, either. I’m with Ctony on this one - stop the witch hunt until we know more.
Yeh, pretty similar except the difference in starboard and port side impact. And bridge wing versus quarter impact. And angle of impact between the two accidents. And main deck additional damage versus no real main deck additional damage. Other than that, yeh identical…
Can we all agree that an OOD with solid understanding of and access to true trails and an EBL might be a good thing? Why does the Navy have to make something like collision avoidance so F-ing complicated?
Apologies for the port side damage error re: McCain, otherwise, the differences you cite are accounted for by the differences in bow structure of the two commercial vessels; a sentence I deleted before posting, but see I should have left in place for your benefit, Slick.
Yes, my old radar had the very long persistence phosphor so it had trails after a fashion. But the OOD has a different work load. A warship which typically shows NO deck lights or any lights but basic NAV lights not very far off the water is a different animal. And as the helmsman does not constitute a prudent lookout, so too the OOD does not qualify as an adequate radar watch stander. The radar watch stander on the bridge of a MoW or even a military AUX ship should be qual’d for a Radar, Unlimited endorsement with serious training in the area of interference, noise and false echoes. If they can’t pass those requirements they have no business on the radar watch for a 30kt+ vessel carrying munitions and the potential target of a ill gotten anti-ship weapon. Contrary to announcements from what I can see both of these merchantmen approached at least 22.5 degrees abaft the warship’s beam thus she was displaying only the stern light low to the water and fairly hard to see from the much higher bridge of MM. In fact, once close aboard the MM had very little chance of seeing the MoW until impact.
When exactly did you go to sea with the Navy? All modern ARPA radars have trails available as an option and can filter those other errors out automatically with a little effort by the operator. Most every member of this forum has a radar certificate and can monitor both the 10 and 3cm whilst drinking coffee and looking out the window. All hail Lord Helmet.
Also, where are you gleaning the knowledge that the McCain was the overtaken vessel? All I’ve seen so far is a marine traffic simulation which does not show the McCain because they were not transmitting AIS. The theory that the McCain tried to overtake the tanker at a high rate of speed and too close a proximity causing an interaction event sounds very possible, but the investigation will have to play out. A stern light is a stern light and where it was positioned should have no bearing here. These ships were in or about a traffic lane and would have been acting accordingly.
They sould be the only radar watch stander. The more people too and the more problems like this you’ll have. One extra person to relay that information to the OOD not only slows things down but inhibits the OOD’s situational awareness.