White knuckles and buried treasure
June 17th, 2009 | Foreign navies Mine warfare Video | Posted by Andrew Scutro
The discovery of a British Royal Navy torpedo during a naval training exercise in the Baltic Sea has not been the only noteworthy event thus far. Photo courtesy of U.S. 6th Fleet public affairs.
In what was sure to be a stomach-churning evolution, amphibious command ship Mount Whitney was refueled underway by the fleet oiler John Lenthall on June 12 in 12-foot seas and 40-mph wind in the Baltic Sea. As one observer put it, Mount Whitney must have been pretty thirsty to pull that off. By way of comparison, here is vintage footage of an unrep from 1973, in the Tonkin Gulf in “moderate seas” and the late John Denver on the 1MC, sort of.
Mount Whitney and John Lenthall are taking part in Baltic Operations 2009, or BALTOPS 2009, which has been a bit of a newsmaker as the same Swedish ship, HSwMS Faaroesund (MUL-20), last week found both evidence of a World War II-era minefield and also sniffed out a torpedo formerly owned by the British Royal Navy, picture above.
Here’s what torpedoes do when not stuck in the mud.
Yours, not mine
June 11th, 2009 | Foreign navies Historical Mine warfare Science and technology | Posted by Andrew Scutro
U.S. 6th Fleet announced today that a service ship from Sweden’s navy discovered a “mine line” that might be “evidence of a minefield.” The find was made during Baltic Operations 2009 or BALTOPS. It’s not outside the realm, as 100,000 sea mines were laid between Sweden and Lithuania back in in WWI and WWII and of them, 60,000 were never recovered, according to 6th Fleet.
Mines are thought by some naval experts as a serious and underrated threat. That was certainly the case during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, which saw mine damage to the gator-turned-mine-countermeasure ship Tripoli seen here and the cruiser Princeton, here.