Uuurr-auughh as the Marine Corps turns 234
November 10th, 2009 | Historical Life at Sea The greenside leadership | Posted by Phil Ewing
Today is the birthday of the United States Marine Corps, marking 234 years since the Continental Congress met at the famous Tun Tavern and approved a resolution calling for two battalions of hard-chargin’ soldiers of the sea to fight from Navy ships against the British. Since then, the Marines have graciously permitted the U.S. government to organize other military services, as well.
The Marine Corps birthday brought to mind a time in Iraq this summer, when Scoop Deck was touring a forward operating post called Camp Ubaydi, in northern Anbar Province, as part of the entourage following around Navy Secretary Ray Mabus and Marine Maj. Gen. Richard Tryon, the commanding general of Multinational Force-West.
Our CH-46 Sea Knights (escorted by a menacing AH-1 Cobra) had landed on an unimproved mud pad; the “chow hall” was a wooden box; and now Tryon was leading Mabus through one of the crowded barracks rooms, occupied by elements of the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines. The leathernecks were standing at attention next to their racks and Mabus, ever the politician, needed a way to break the ice with them.
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.
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:
The maritime strategy enters the terrible twos
October 20th, 2009 | Ballistic missile defense Coast Guard Foreign navies Maritime operations The greenside Washington leadership | Posted by Phil Ewing
The carrier George Washington trained with Korean warships in the Pacific last week. International cooperation was a key plank of the maritime strategy unveiled two years ago this week // MC3 Jeffrey Stewart/ Navy
The famed brown-shoe blogger SteeljawScribe — or as they’d say in Pittsburgh, “Stuhljawr-Scrub” — has reminded the Internet this week that we’ve reached the second anniversary of the unveiling of the maritime strategy (pdf), the document that was supposed to pave a clear road forward for the U.S. naval services and Coast Guard.
Asks Steeljaw: Did it? Answers Steeljaw: Kinda.
As a guidance document the strategy was useful, he writes, but it was incomplete because it contained no specifics for how many and what kinds of ships the U.S. would need to execute it. Those details were supposed to come in the “Naval Operations Concept,” the force structure document for which the world still waits. (Although incomplete initial versions have bubbled to the surface.)
The NOC, writes Steeljaw:
is increasingly important as planners inside and out of the naval services wrestle with new concepts and capabilities, the most recent example being the significant shift in BMD emphasis in the European theater … This redirection and the attendant gossamer-light expositions of how we will employ sea-based BMD in the maritime strategy has led to a fair degree of mis-information and erroneous assumptions as to general operational capabilities, requirements, and necessary force structure. More detailed explanation, as would be found in a NOC, would go a long ways to alleviate this condition.
On the anniversary of the MarStrat, it’s worth asking: How valuable has it proved for the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard?
No, you may not go play with the Americans
September 29th, 2009 | Foreign navies Ships The greenside | Posted by Phil Ewing
Indian, Japanese and U.S. warship trained together in May, but India's Defence Ministry forbade its navy from participating in a U.S. amphibious exercise this month in Japan // MC3 Matthew Jordan/ Navy
Here’s an odd item passed along by a Scoop Deck pal on the subcontinent: The Indian Navy was all set to participate in a U.S. amphibious exercise in Japan recently, but it backed out when it didn’t get permission from India’s Ministry of Defence. According to today’s Indian Express, a dozen Indian naval officers were all set to fly out to join the U.S. Navy and Marines for the exercise on Okinawa, then they weren’t permitted to go.
What’s even stranger is that this isn’t the first time India has backed out of training with the U.S. military at the last minute:
In one case, the US even expressed dismay as it suffered a loss of several million dollars due to the last-minute cancellation of an exercise between the US Marines and Indian Navy. The exercise, which was scheduled to take place in India weeks before the Lok Sabha elections, was called off after troops and specialized equipment had been committed by the US. Another exercise was called off after the elections took place, sending conflicting signals.
The U.S. and Indian navies usually seem to have a pretty good relationship — India’s second-largest warship, the Jalashwa, used to be the amphibious transport dock Trenton — so this is kind of strange.
And speaking of India and the Express, they provide a cautionary tale for looking at a ship really closely before you decide to buy it.
Russia looks to France for its gator needs
August 27th, 2009 | Blogs Foreign navies Science and technology Ships The greenside | Posted by Phil Ewing
Russia plans to buy several French Mistral-class amphibious helicopter carriers, like the Tonnerre, seen here // Marine Nationale
The ship-o-sphere is spinning after Wednesday’s announcement that Russia will buy several Mistral-class amphibious ships from France, in one of the biggest foreign defense acquisitions modern Russia has ever made. Russia, and the Soviet Union before it, had a centuries-old shipbuilding tradition, but Moscow’s military leaders are apparently uncertain enough about their own yards that they’ve turned to the French for help.
Three floating 9/11 memorials
August 21st, 2009 | Ships The greenside | Posted by Phil Ewing
The amphibious transport dock New York visits its namesake city in this Navy illustration // Naval Sea Systems Command
The average American has had plenty of good reasons over the past few years to become familiar with the San Antonio class of amphibious transport docks, but that will probably all be eclipsed as the newest one, the New York, gets closer to commissioning this November. The ship’s bow stem contains 7.5 tons of steel from the wreckage of the World Trade Center, which has earned it a place in e-mail forwards and a “true” listing on Snopes, and possibly the greatest general fame of any Navy warship today.
The Navy took delivery of the New York on Friday at its shipyard in Avondale, La., at exactly 9:11 a.m. – spooky! – organizers swore it was a coincidence — marking another step down the line to the New York formally joining the fleet. It’s only the first of three small-deck gators that will commemorate the victims of Sept. 11, all of which will carry some element from the sites of the attacks, said Katie Roberts, a spokeswoman for Naval Sea Systems Command.
The Arlington, LPD 24, named for Arlington County, Va., where the Pentagon was damaged by a hijacked airliner, will display metal from the crash site in its interior spaces, Roberts said. The Somerset, LPD 25, named for Somerset County, Pennsylvania — where United Flight 93’s passengers forced down the plane on its way to attack Washington, D.C. — will contain 5 tons of steel in its stem bar from a coal crane that worked near the crash site.
Movin’ out
August 9th, 2009 | The Middle East The greenside | Posted by Phil Ewing
CAMP AL TAQADDUM, IRAQ – “The Navy gets the gravy; the Marines get the beans” – one hears a lot of doggerel like that the longer one spends time around the military. What does it mean? Who knows? It kept cropping into my head, however, with each new stop during our tour of this isolated logistics base, the Iraqi home of the 2nd Marine Logistics Group and a lily pad for CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters on their way to Baghdad.
Here’s a better one: “Amateurs study tactics. Professionals study logistics.” That’s not really true, either, but at least it makes sense, and reasonable people can make a case for both sides.
Ooh-rah. Urr-augh? Wheew-rawr?
August 5th, 2009 | The Middle East The deckplates The greenside Washington | Posted by Phil Ewing
AL ASAD AIR BASE, IRAQ — Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said what could have been his first “ooh-rah” today, at the close of a brief all-hands call up at Camp Ubaydi, in the northern part of Anbar Province. Specifically, he said “whew-RAW,” and, immediately recognizing the spirited greeting of their beloved Corps, the Marines in the audience all responded in kind.
The more time I spend around Marines, though, the more I’m learning that there are apparently as many ways to say it as there are leathernecks. Here at Al Asad, where there are tens of thousands of Marines working for Multi-National Force-West, I’ve already heard at least half a dozen different variations on it, ranging from a clipped, seal bark “ura” — which includes a kind of throat click — to a much more drawn-out, southern gentleman-sounding “yeeeuuwhh rauuughhh.”
If I were an NPR reporter, I’d make every Marine I met say “ur-ugghh” or “hurrruh” or “ughraaawr” into a microphone, then spool them all together for a nice four-minute drive-time segment about the cultural diversity of the Marine Corps. But instead I thought I’d throw it out to the Deck, especially our friends on the green side, and ask how you say it, or how you think it should be said. What made you say it that way? Let us know in the comments.
Yeeeww-rauuuugh.