San Juan and the SANDF
November 6th, 2009 | Carriers Foreign navies Historical Submarines | Posted by Andrew Scutro
Groton-based fast attack submarine San Juan arrives in South Africa for "regional security cooperation activities" and other events.//USN
In what’s becoming almost a habit, another U.S. Navy ship has stopped to visit South Africa. On Nov. 4, the fast attack submarine San Juan pulled into Simon’s Town for what 6th Fleet bills as a “first-ever, at-sea” engagement with that nation’s undersea fleet.
San Juan follows the destroyer Arleigh Burke, which arrived in Durban on July 13 for a similar visit. And last October, the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt and cruiser Monterey stopped in Cape Town, marking the first time a U.S. flattop had been to South Africa since the Franklin D. Roosevelt made a stop in 1967.
The U.S. Navy has been building ties with the South Africans steadily in recent years. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead met naval leadership there in April.
For most of the second half of the 20th century South Africa was an international pariah because of its segregation policy known as “apartheid,” which was repealed in 1991. Check out the South African military here.
The new Ford model
November 5th, 2009 | Carriers | Posted by Andrew Scutro
Northrop Grumman has announced a date for the ceremonial keel-laying of the Navy’s new class of aircraft carrier. On Nov. 14, dignitaries and media will crowd into the Newport News shipyard for a ceremonial beginning of the Gerald R. Ford, CVN 78.
The last of the Nimitz-class carriers, the George H.W. Bush, was commissioned on a bright but chilly Jan. 10 by the former president himself. President Ford’s daughter Susan Ford Bales is CVN 78’s sponsor and her initials will be welded into the ship’s steel.
Like the first President Bush, Ford served in the Navy during World War II. The first of the Ford carriers is expected to join the fleet in 2015 with a host of new technologies and design changes from the Nimitz ships.
Gator swims up, swallows submarine
November 5th, 2009 | Historical Maritime operations Science and technology Ships Submarines | Posted by Phil Ewing
The dock landing ship Carter Hall could be the first amphibious ship to transport a nuclear submarine in its well deck // MCSN Derek Poole / Navy
Have you ever looked down at the well deck of an amphibious ship and thought, wouldn’t it be cool if we tried to put the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile down there, or a Fleetwood Pace Arrow, or a giant mobile Tim Hortons? Admittedly, this is kind of silly — those things would obviously all fit at the same time, with plenty of room for actual green gear.
The dock landing ship Carter Hall actually is getting ready to try out carrying some crazy cargo in its well deck: This week this ship arrived at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, with the mission of gulping down the decommissioned research submarine NR-1, which is riding on a support barge. Carter Hall will transport the legendary sub to Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Washington, where its reactor will be dismantled. Wrote Foster’s Daily Democrat:
The barge and NR-1 will be guided into the well deck of Carter Hall utilizing a combination of tugs and the ship’s capstan system — a rotating machine that is used to lift or pull heavy objects with the assistance of lines or cables.
After that, it’ll be a long, slow trip around the continent. After that — maybe NR-1 will become a museum ship.
Bored in Manhattan? Check out the Navy and Marines
November 4th, 2009 | Life at Sea Maritime operations Ships The greenside | Posted by Phil Ewing
Marine Capt. Anthony Scarcella showed a visitor the controls of his AH-1 Cobra aboard the New York this week. Many aircraft, vehicles and weapons are on display on board // MC1 Corey Lewis/ Navy
NEW YORK — Here’s an old story you’ve heard before: A hot new performer arrives in in this notoriously hard-to-please city and is rewarded with fame and adulation. Here’s the twist: This time the main character is a 25,000-ton Navy warship.
Canadian Navy: It’s Timmies or nothin’, eh?
November 4th, 2009 | Chow Foreign navies Life at Sea Morale | Posted by Phil Ewing
U.S. and Canadian airmen unloaded a mobile Tim Hortons from a C-17 at Kandahar Air Field, Afghanistan. Tim Hortons coffee fuels Canada's military in the same way that F76 and JP-5 fuel the U.S. Navy // Canadian Forces
Why do Canadians love Tim Hortons so much? Good question. Why do boatswain’s mates wear those funny hard hats? These are mysteries to which there may never be good answers, but their effects are quite plain — especially that first one. Canadians love their “Timmies,” as they call it, in the same way they love power plays and those French fries with that weird gravy on them. Well indeed does Scoop Deck remember spotting a Tim Hortons, dispensing piping hot coffee, on a 115-degree afternoon at Kandahar Air Field, Afghanistan.
The Canadian Forces needs its Timmies so bad that it has issued a solicitation for the coffee in Halifax by name. Starbucks, Peet’s, Gevalia — none need apply, the CBC reports:
“There shall be no acceptable substitute,” according to the tender issued Monday. “Tim Hortons has been determined by MARLANT” — the navy’s Maritime Forces Atlantic command — “as the product of choice based on expressed customer taste and preferences for boosting morale in Afghanistan, Sudan and Sierra Leone.”
You can’t get a much bigger endorsement than a nation’s military requesting your product to the exclusion of all those other hosers. Is there an equivalent coffee in the U.S. Navy? Or do you rely on command ingenuity to create a distinctive product — i.e. “boat coffee?”
H/T: Springbored (who praised the U.S. Navy’s decision to shed “fru-fru, gold-plated, 5th Generation stealth coffee.”)
Just don’t call ‘em desert squids
November 3rd, 2009 | The Middle East individual augmentees | Posted by Andrew Scutro
At one point in the Navy’s recent history, sailors serving ashore in Iraq and Afghanistan, often as individual augmentees in Army units, took to calling themselves “dirt sailors.” The brass didn’t like that, we learned. Maybe it was due to the implied value of “dirt.” Sailors, accustomed to being at sea and surrounded by water were merely being observant, as their usual habitat had suddenly turned dry and ah, dirty.
Today however, a new light has been cast. In remarks during a ceremony for the Stockdale Award at the Pentagon, Adm. Gary Roughead, chief of naval operations, was describing the current duties of the winners, both ashore in Iraq. He said they are what he “affectionately” refers to as “sand sailors.” So, sand sailors it is.
Attention, vandals: Your Navy needs you
November 3rd, 2009 | Life at Sea Ships | Posted by Phil Ewing
About 100,000 people were expected to visit the amphibious transport dock New York during its visit this week, leading up to its commissioning Saturday // Philip Ewing/Staff
ABOARD THE AMPHIBIOUS TRANSPORT DOCK NEW YORK — This ship’s arrival in New York this week is a solemn occasion and a time for reflection and all that, but Scoop Deck was glad to hear that other people were having cognitive trouble connecting New York, the squared-away, brand-new warship, to New York, the megalopolis.
Navy ships are powerful instruments of American influence, operated with discipline and expertise. But the name “New York” conjures up images of the faux-wood paneling in the F Line to Brooklyn; scenesters in tight jeans talking about bands you’ve never heard of; astronomical rents; men sleeping on grates on 8th Avenue; and the aroma of human excrement floating out of the sewer.
Chief Electronics Technician (SW/SCW/EXW) Mike Kerrigan agreed that some grittier elements were missing from the brand-new New York. There are a few touches: The crew’s mess is named the “Skyline Café.” The starboard-side main deck passageway is named “Broadway,” and before the ship leaves New York, it will almost certainly acquire a souvenir (or stolen) Broadway street sign from Manhattan.
But Kerrigan said he thought the ship could do still better. (And for the record, he voted for “Hell’s Kitchen” as the name for the crew’s mess.)
“I told the guys, I’m gonna go into the subway and find some of those kids with spray cans and bring ‘em back on board and have ‘em go to town,” Kerrigan laughed. “We’ve got a lot of white space on the walls in the upper V” — the upper vehicle bay.
The New York wouldn’t be complete without a tasteful, but authentic, wall of graffiti, Kerrigan said.
“It’s not commonplace for a Navy ship to do that, but we’re special anyway,” he said.
New York, meet New York
November 3rd, 2009 | Life at Sea Maritime operations Photos Ships | Posted by Phil Ewing
Crew members aboard the New York got a tour of the harbor Monday that tourists would dream of // Philip Ewing/ Staff
ABOARD THE AMPHIBIOUS TRANSPORT DOCK NEW YORK — Reveille was at 0400 Monday morning, and the 1MC crackled with a familiar brassy introduction and an unmistakable baritone:
“Start spreaadin’ the newwwwws! I’m leaavin’ todaaaaay!”
The sun had not yet risen over the clear morning in the anchorage off Brighton Beach where this ship had spent Sunday, but the atmosphere aboard the New York was already electric. Mayor Michael Bloomberg had distributed 100 “FDNYPD” ball caps in the crew’s mess the night before. The Yankees had won. The Navy ship with the supernatural link to its namesake was about to visit for the first time.
Stand by for LPD 21 mania
October 30th, 2009 | Morale Ships | Posted by Phil Ewing
The amphibious transport dock New York will be the belle of the media world in the week leading up to commissioning in Manhattan on Nov. 7 // MC1 Shawn Graham
Navy-types, get ready to be blasted with an information fire hose. The amphibious transport dock New York has pulled away from Naval Station Norfolk, Va., bound for its namesake city and a week’s worth of frenzied attention in the media capital of the world before its commissioning Nov. 7.
The end of the JATO era
October 29th, 2009 | Aviation Morale Navy The greenside Video | Posted by Phil Ewing
The Blue Angels' beloved Marine-crewed C-130T, "Fat Albert," will do its last jet-assisted takeoff Nov. 14, to the dismay of males everywhere // Navy
A seldom-discussed but important rite of passage for every American boy is the first time he hears the story of “the JATO car,” the infamous station wagon whose owner augmented it with Jet Assisted Take Off rocket bottles. The cops found the wreckage of his car crashed into the side of a mountain, the story goes, clear evidence of a man who sacrificed his life to absurd speed-demonism. You can do insane, dangerous, awesome things in this world, the boy learns.
The rite is completed when that boy, perhaps by then a man, learns the story isn’t true. It never happened. And the chances it could ever happen are dwindling, because the world is running out of JATO rockets, according to this story by Scoop Deck shipmate Amy McCullough of Marine Corps Times. One of the last U.S. aircraft to regularly execute jet-assisted takeoffs — the Blue Angels’ beloved, Marine-crewed C-130T “Fat Albert” — will do its last one next month. The end of the “JATO car” legend can’t be far behind. Wrote McCullough:
“Everyone in the Fat Albert shop is really sad,” said Maj. Drew Hess, the Blue Angels’ senior C-130 pilot. “It is a significant chapter [in the team’s history] that unfortunately is being closed.”
To execute a JATO, Fat Albert uses eight solid-fuel rocket bottles, which supply enough momentum for the aircraft to leave the runway after traveling just 1,500 feet. Climbing at a 45-degree angle, it can reach 1,000 feet in just 15 seconds.
The [one-time use] fuel bottles, which weigh about 150 pounds when full, were designed to thrust C-130s skyward in austere conditions where traditional runways are unavailable, said 1st Lt. Craig Thomas, a Marine spokesman at the Pentagon. But the Corps hasn’t used JATO in combat since the Vietnam War, he said, and it’s unlikely to do so again, as newer KC-130Js have engines built to exert the same thrust as C-130Ts outfitted with rocket bottles.
Cruel, inescapable progress. Kind of like growing up.
Check out this motivational video of Fat Albert doing its thing:
