Book deal, casting call: Pirates, SEALs and a DDG
January 29th, 2010 | Books Maritime operations merchant ships Pirates | Posted by Phil Ewing
"Thanks for savin' me, sailor -- hey, did you hear I've got a book coming out?" // MC3 David Danals / Navy
This week the Center of Excellence got a truckload of “advance uncorrected proofs” of “A Captain’s Duty,” a forthcoming memoir by Richard Phillips, the merchant captain saved by the Navy last year after he was taken hostage by Somali pirates. In his cover photo, Phillips wears a command baseball cap (although not a Pirate Brigade cap) from the destroyer Bainbridge, which was instrumental in his rescue.
Phillips’ book is full of new details about his ordeal.
What might have been: CVB(N)s, BBBs and T-ABs?
January 4th, 2010 | Books Historical nuclear weapons Science and technology Ships Submarines | Posted by Phil Ewing
The ballistic missile sub George Washington, commissioned 50 years ago on Dec. 31, would have been only the first of many types of warships to carry ballistic missiles in the Navy's original plan // Navy
A few days ago we observed the 50th anniversary of the commissioning of the ballistic missile sub George Washington, the Navy’s first boomer and the culmination of its bid to grasp its share of the U.S. strategic deterrence mission. Did you know, however, that submarines were originally only one slice of a Navy plan to field nuclear ballistic missiles throughout the fleet?
In their excellent history “Cold War Submarines,” authors Norman Polmar and K.J. Moore write that the Navy considered spreading Polaris missiles all over the place. Carriers, battleships, cruisers and even specially built, disguised “merchant ships” would sail with missiles aimed at vital targets in the Soviet Union: