The only one of its kind
June 30th, 2010 | Military Sealift Command The greenside | Posted by Phil Ewing
The VADM K.R. Wheeler trained this week to deploy and recover its eight miles of fuel hoses. // MSC
It’s seabasing’s world, and we just live in it — or so some elements in the Pentagon and at Quantico might say. So, all right: Y’got a whole bunch of angry, face-painted Devil Dogs ashore on a hostile beach doing what they do best — chopping up bad guys and kicking up rooster-tails in the sand with their armored vehicles — and then the combat element pushes inward. That leaves a beachhead for Navy and Marine Corps engineers to turn into a depot, and the first thing they’re going to want is gas for all their vehicles and equipment. Lots of gas. How do you get it there?
One way to do it is with Military Sealift Command’s offshore petroleum distribution ship VADM K. R. Wheeler, which, as this official story explains, is the only ship in the world that can stand miles out to sea and pump fuel ashore from a tanker. Here’s how it works: Wheeler’s crew sends a lighter amphibious resupply cargo vessel ashore to serve as an anchor, then attaches a messenger line to the LARC’s winch. It pulls in the line, which then guides the ship’s eight miles worth of hose to a connection on the beach. Wheeler can then start pumping up to 1,400 gallons of fuel per minute from a merchant vessel, an MSC oiler, or whatever’s available.
The ship practiced this routine — without actually delivering any fuel — in South Korea last week. Wheeler trains to deploy and recover its hoses about every year, just to be sure the ship is ready to go.
At the court of King Neptune
June 29th, 2010 | Life at Sea | Posted by Phil Ewing
His Royal Majesty King Neptune Rex, Ruler of the Oceans and Patron Of the Order of the Golden Shellback, held court this week aboard the New Orleans. // MCCS Robert Winkler / Navy
His Royal Majesty King Neptune paid a visit to the amphibious transport dock New Orleans this week as it crossed the Equator, to personally oversee that the ship was purged of slimy wogs and that only trusted shellbacks entered his briny domain.
Fortunately there are outstanding pictures by MCCS Robert Winkler, so you can have a taste of the occasion without getting soaking wet, humiliated or worse.
King Neptune determined that it would please him for these wogs to sing show tunes and dance the “can-can.”
Brazilian navy servants of King Neptune taught the crew of this small vessel to respect the power of the open seas.
After the last of the disreputable wogs were purged, MC1 Brien Aho captured the ship’s crew of newly minted shellbacks embracing King Neptune’s watery realm in a swim call.
Not for amateurs
June 29th, 2010 | Books Historical | Posted by Phil Ewing
Did Jellicoe make the right decisions at Jutland? The question is treated extensively in the new "Warship 2010." // Royal Navy
The new “Warship 2010” will make certain readers pray for e-mail outages, rainy weekends or sunspots — anything to free up as much time as possible in which to get lost in this year’s edition.
The left of boom
June 29th, 2010 | Diving Environment | Posted by Phil Ewing
Navy divers, like these sailors from MDSU 1 working off Barbados this month, could be called in if officials decide to blow up the BP oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. // MC2 Chris Lussier / Navy
Former President Bill Clinton didn’t just say “they” need to blow up the still-gushing Deepwater Horizon well, or that “we” should — he said “the Navy” would have to do it. All right. Fortunately it’s got just the guys for this job, guys with high-speed dive gear and cool tattoos who belong to the Mobile Diving and Salvage Units.
So how would they do it? The troublesome wellhead is too deep for human divers, so the Navy’s demo team would probably have to put a charge on a remotely operated vehicle, send ‘er down to the target zone, and either write off the cost of the robo-sub or run lots of det cord from the surface. Mash the button, boom, and — just as they have so many other times in this world — explosives make a problem go away.
But would it be that simple? Many things could go wrong. An explosion could destroy the underwater pipes and infrastructure but not actually stanch the leak, and then you’d have a gushing well under a worse mess of wreckage. What do you think? Should the Navy start planning to blow this thing up, or should we give the sea-roughnecks already on the job more time to handle it?
Bang!
June 28th, 2010 | Books Ships | Posted by Phil Ewing
MC3 Adam Thomas / Navy
This isn’t a gun salute — it’s a live-fire exercise starring the destroyer Curtis Wilbur — but it brought to mind this passage, from The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea:
“Gun salutes were fired on every possible occasion and were often unlimited in extent, largely due to a predilection of naval officers of all nations for loud and prolonged noise…”
Shake a leg
June 25th, 2010 | Gator Navy Life at Sea Morale | Posted by Gidget Fuentes
Amphibious assault ship Peleliu's mascot entertains schoolkids in Dili, Timor-Leste on a break during "Crocodilo" exercises.//MC3 Ian Campbell/Navy
This photograph – of amphibious assault ship Peleliu’s mascot showing off some of his (or her?) latest dance moves to the amazement of school children in Timor-Leste – arrived in Scoop Deck’s inbox this week. For the scores of high-res photos that jam our mail servers, this one provided a sunny break from all things haze gray and underway.
The Peleliu Gator, as the mascot is called, has entertained crowds at college football games and homecomings, but on this deployment it reached out to young children at schools and orphanages in community service projects.
Peleliu and her San Diego-based crew took some breaks during “Crocodilo,” a bilateral training with Timor-Leste and Australia military forces, to reach out to local students. It was a blue-green effort, as a foursome of Marines with California-based 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which is deployed as part of the Peleliu Amphibious Ready Group, serenaded the schoolkids.
Calling in the auxiliary
June 23rd, 2010 | Coast Guard | Posted by Susan Schept
Fan boats normally used for ice rescues have been sent from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico to navigate shallow coastal waters. // PA3 Zac Crawford / Coast Guard
On the same day that Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Robert Papp recognized the Coast Guard Auxiliary’s 71st birthday. the service also sent out an “all hands on deck” message requesting more of the volunteers to help with the containment of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
Today, Papp thanked the auxiliary for its contributions, especially during the aftermath of the Jan. 12 earthquake in Haiti and its current assistance helping with public affairs and vessel safety checks in regards to the oil spill in the Gulf.
But much more is needed to not only backfill positions of active-duty Coasties who have been assigned to the spill, but also to respond directly to clean up coastal pollution. The ALCOAST message requested volunteers who are willing to work long hours and be available for a 30-day period. Rear Adm. B. M. Salerno, deputy commandant for operations, had this to say:
This has become a mission of unparalleled proportion. As time has passed, the breadth and scope of spill impacts have significantly expanded and require long-term, coordinated action that is expected to last through the remainder of CY2010.
Are Somali pirates shifting their AOR?
June 22nd, 2010 | Pirates | Posted by Phil Ewing
A boarding team from the cruiser San Jacinto investigated a "suspected pirate vessel" in the Gulf of Aden last month. Pressure from teams like these may have driven pirates north into the Red Sea, according to a report. // MC2 Ja'lon Rhinehart / Navy
Eagle1, the Web’s top pirate maven, has an interesting post today that includes a report that the pirates off the lawless coast of Somalia could be moving north into the Bab-al-Mandab, the “Gate of Tears” that connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden.
One reason, Eagle1 suggests, could be that monsoon conditions in the Indian Ocean have pushed pirates up into what could be more sheltered waters that make it easier to operate in their small, low-freeboard skiffs. Another reason could be that the international anti-piracy patrols might feel a little skittish operating in the narrow strait, and patrolling too far up into the Red Sea could dilute the effectiveness of having ships in the normal areas of pirate infestation.
So just as criminals want to be where cops aren’t, these pirates might see an area of low pressure, so to speak, up in the Red Sea.
All that and an Osprey, too
June 22nd, 2010 | Aviation Ships | Posted by Phil Ewing
Count ‘em: One, two, three, four update: five, six (!) helicopters, including a two behemoth CH-53 Super Stallions, parked on the flight deck of the amphibious transport dock Mesa Verde in this photo by MC1 Steve Smith, and still room for an MV-22 Osprey to come in for a landing! The Osprey, from VMM-162, the “Golden Eagles,” probably ended up maxing out all the space on the ship’s flight deck, but still — that’s pretty good for a “small-deck” gator.
Thanks to our eagle-eyed commenters who corrected my count with the addtional birds.
The long flight back to Washington
June 22nd, 2010 | leadership Shore duty Washington | Posted by Phil Ewing
Gen. Stanley McChrystal visited the carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower at sea last week. He may not return to the ship, or to Kabul, depending on the outcome of his trip to Washington. // MC1 Mark O'Donald / Navy
Even the most grizzled military reporters here at the Center of Excellence are in shock this morning over the up-and-ready scandal to which everyone in Washington blinked awake this morning: President Obama has recalled the top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, over what sounds like one corker of a profile in the forthcoming issue of Rolling Stone.
(We’re all struggling to get our minds around it: Rolling Stone is publishing a controversial, relevant story? Did it run out of rock guitarists to rank arbitrarily in an annotated list? Kidding!)
Anyway: McChrystal and his aides, by all accounts, really let loose for reporter Michael Hastings, who quotes them criticizing the president, the vice president and the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan. McChrystal hasn’t even tried to say his words were “taken out of context,” in the classic phrase — he has already issued a full-scale apology. Now he is on his way back to Washington, probably ensconced in a luxurious Air Force C-20, thinking about what awaits him here inside the infamous bubble.
If this situation sounds familiar, it should: This is almost exactly what happened to the former head of Central Command, Adm. William “Fox” Fallon, after a profile in Esquire magazine. And the grandfather of them all was Gen. of the Army Douglas MacArthur, who didn’t need long-form magazine journalism to irk President Truman one too many times.
If Obama fires McChrystal — Galrahn says he will and should — that sets us up for a new round of four-star roulette for who will take his place. Who would you pick? And what effect could a new commander have on the thousands of sailors who are serving as individual augmentees across Afghanistan?