Seen on the street in Kyiv.

Words of Advice:

"If Something Seems To Be Too Good To Be True, It's Best To Shoot It, Just In Case." -- Fiona Glenanne

“The Mob takes the Fifth. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?” -- The TOFF *

"Foreign Relations Boil Down to Two Things: Talking With People or Killing Them." -- Unknown

“Speed is a poor substitute for accuracy.” -- Real, no-shit, fortune from a fortune cookie

"If you believe that you are talking to G-d, you can justify anything.” — my Dad

"Colt .45s; putting bad guys in the ground since 1873." -- Unknown

"Stay Strapped or Get Clapped." -- probably not Mr. Rogers

"The Dildo of Karma rarely comes lubed." -- Unknown

"Eck!" -- George the Cat

* "TOFF" = Treasonous Orange Fat Fuck, A/K/A Dolt-45,
A/K/A Commandante (or Cadet) Bone Spurs,
A/K/A El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago, A/K/A the Asset., A/K/A P01135809

Friday, February 8, 2019

What We Should Really Do to Try to Fix the Navy

First thing would be to take the people who caused the situation of undermanning, overextension, undertraining and slashing repairs and do one simple thing: Shoot all of them.

Donald Rumsfeld, Vern Clark, Ash Carter, Ray Mabus, Jonathan Greenert, and most of the congressional Tea Party, for starters.

Read this and you'll understand why. The blood of the dead sailors from the USS Fitzgerald and the USS John S. McCain are on their hands.

This is a photo that was sent out by a Navy PAO:


That, according to Cdr. Sal, is the USS Wasp. There was a day when no sane First Lieutenant, let alone ships' captain, would have tolerated so much running rust.

Contrast, if you will, this photo:


That photo was of a Cold War USN warship's boat's davit which had a bad limit switch. The davit's winches raised the davit's arms past the shut-off point and bent the arms. Shit happens. But the one thing you don't see in that photo is running rust.

I heard a lot of stories about how bad it was post-Vietnam, when ships had to be creative in order to obtain parts and supplies. From what I can see, things are far worse, now.

Nobody in the Navy these days has the balls to look their bosses in the eye and say: "With all due respect, unable to comply."

I knew of one ship's captain, one time, who refused to sail because his ship did not have enough boiler technicians to man the plant, let alone enough who were watch-qualified. He was the hero of the waterfront. But I'll bet that he tubed his career and he knew it at the time. Yet he likely chose to do it that way, then end up on the bad side of the green table following a major accident or fire. That took courage, integrity, balls, whatever you want to call it.

Qualities that were scarce then, and scarcer now.

6 comments:

none said...

Joined the Navy in 1973, first ship I was stationed on was built in 1945. No names.
The saying was: "If it moves, grease it, if it doesn't, paint it." The ship had little money for parts, depending on the division, I was in engineering, not much funding. It was "fix it or (forget) it". We made diaphragms for regulators out of soda cans out at sea, took "field trips" to ships of the same class being decommissioned to salvage parts, that kind of thing. Always had money for primer and paint though, you could always get a needle gun or chipper. We would barter for pump and valve packing, that kind of thing.

I just deleted 2 paragraphs of details no one but an old engineer would be interested in, lol.

But we never had rust like that. Ever,

0_0 said...

We were shorthanded (in nucs) and were always port & starboard when visiting ports, 3 or 4 section at sea (usually 3), but our shit worked and the topsiders would jump on rust (not streaks) when it showed up.
The almost 60 year old truncated hull of the former USS Long Beach is still floating pierside at Bremerton. Maybe some of these **-21 and **-X and LCS designers could go up there and take notes.

BadTux said...

I read that article two days ago when it came out and was furious. It was especially infuriating that the stateside-based ships had all the personnel they needed while the fleet that was doing all the work was having to strip ships in port for maintenance of their sailors in order to have enough sailors to put on the ships sailing that day. So you had a bunch of sailors on ships they weren't familiar with doing things that weren't their specialty and it was ... oh well fuck, you read it too, so you know just how fuckheaded it was.

I just don't understand why the stateside ships would have all their sailors and the ships actually deployed did not....

Comrade Misfit said...

Neal, I would have liked to read it.

BadTux, why the 7th Fleet was so starved for trained sailors and parts is beyond my comprehension. I saw transferring trained sailors to fulfill a critical need back in the day, but it was limited to one or two people, per ship, at best. Captains hated to ask for such help, as they took it as a slight against their command abilities.

Bad running rust was not acceptable, ever. Sailing with major combat, engineering and navigational systems out of order was not acceptable.

Deadstick said...

Does "running rust" mean vertical streaks caused by water running down a surface?

Comrade Misfit said...

"Running rust" is when something is rusting and seawater carries streaks of rust down a vertical surface.

It demonstrates one of two things: Either a lack of pride in the ship or severe undermanning. It also is a symptom of deeper problems. A ship that looks like a garbage scow often is one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ppt8OWaHg5c