End of an era
December 6th, 2011 | 6th Fleet Amphibious operations Amphibious Ready Group Combat support Commanding officers Flight deck certification Homecoming leadership Marine Corps Marine Expeditionary Unit Maritime operations Mine warfare Navy Norfolk Naval Station Odyssey Dawn Photos Ponce Ships The Middle East | Posted by Bill McMichael
On May 7, 1970, the Beatles released their last single: “The Long and Winding Road.”
Last week, the amphibious transport dock Ponce, launched 13 days after the song and commissioned in July 1971, completed its own long journey, coming home for the last time after four decades of service.
Sailors prepare to handle lines on Naval Station Norfolk's Pier 2 as the amphibious transport dock Ponce makes its final return to homeport. Ponce will now begin the long process that will result in the ship's decommissioning early next year. // U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Stevie Tate
Those years were filled with significant events. Ponce helped evacuate nearly 300 mostly U.S. and British Westerners from Lebanon during the 1976 civil war, and supported 6th Fleet air strikes on pro-Syrian militia positions in defense of U.S. Marines ashore. It supported military disaster relief in Florida following 1992′s devastating Hurricane Andrew. It took part in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, serving as the flagship of a minesweeping task group that opened the key port of Umm Qasr. Most recently, Ponce, as part of the Kearsarge Amphibious Ready Group, supported the NATO strikes on Libya that played a key role in helping rebel forces drive Moammar Gadhafi from power.
It was during that last cruise that the ship’s commanding officer and executive officer were fired by Vice Adm. Harry Harris, then-commander of 6th Fleet — Cmdr. Etta Jones for what investigators said were abuses of power, and Lt. Cmdr. Kurt Boenisch for not standing up to Jones. Jones apologized to the crew in a statement released by her lawyer the same day Ponce returned home last week, saying that she hoped the public “will not overlook their positive story.”
Ponce spent its final operational week supporting air operations for II Marine Expeditionary Force’s air-ground task force. One sailor said he took a lot of pride in being one of the last to man the ship’s flight deck.
“This underway is the last time anyone will fly on Ponce,” Aviation Support Equipment Technician 3rd Class Morgan Butkus was quoted by Ponce’s public affairs office as saying. “How many years have people been here with stuff happening, and this is the last of it.”
Four decades on Ponce, by the numbers: It was served by more than 18,400 sailors and embarked by more than 24,500 Marines; it landed and launched aircraft more than 39,000 times; it was involved in more than 25 major operations; it was commanded by 28 different commanding officers.
The ship will be decommissioned in early 2012 and placed in long-term storage at the Naval Inactive Ship Maintenance Facility in Philadelphia.
Quartermaster 2nd Class Shixi Zhang mans a telescopic alidade on the starboard bridge wing of the amphibious transport dock ship Ponce as the ship gets underway from Naval Station Norfolk for its final scheduled underway period. // U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Nathanael Miller
Mason, arriving
July 27th, 2011 | 5th Fleet 6th Fleet Deployment Homecoming Marine Security Cooperation Navy Norfolk Naval Station Photos The Med The Middle East Theater Security Cooperation | Posted by Bill McMichael
The Norfolk-based destroyer Mason finally made it home today, bringing up the rear of the Enterprise Carrier Strike Group, most of which arrived at home ports or bases July 15. One of the happy sailors was Electrician’s Mate 1st Class Eugene Andal, who was selected to debark and receive the traditional first kiss from his wife and kids:
Electrician’s Mate 1st Class Eugene Andal greets his wife and children during the July 27 homecoming of the destroyer Mason. Mason was the final ship of the Enterprise Strike Group to return home. // U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Kayla Jo Guthrie
The Strike Group left Norfolk Jan. 13 to support theater security cooperation and maritime security cooperation efforts during a deployment to the U.S. 5th and 6th Fleet areas of responsibility that covered nearly 60,000 miles.
The ship that buried bin Laden
June 14th, 2011 | Carriers Navy Photos Ships The Middle East | Posted by Dave Brown
"No comment": Carl Vinson commanding officer Capt. Bruce Lindsey talks about what he can't talk about during a June 13 conference call with reporters // Navy
It’s gotta be at least a little frustrating. You’re just wrapping up a highly successful deployment and you’ve finally got a whole mess of reporters who want to talk to you about it. But they don’t. They want to talk about that. You know. That guy you buried at sea and now utterly defines your ship, crew and deployment, at least until the next big thing happens.
You are no longer the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson. You are The Carrier That Buried Osama Bin Laden, and it’s sticking with you, no matter how tangential the story. Check out these headlines:
U.S. carrier that buried bin Laden visits Hong Kong
Navy ship that buried bin Laden stops in Hawaii
Osama’s burial ship captain fears for crew safety in aftermath of operation
“Osama’s burial ship.” Rolls right off the tongue, doesn’t it?
Capt. Bruce Lindsey, in a June 13 conference call with eager reporters, took it all in stride — and a dash of humor. When told by one reporter that a California man was planning on heading to the Arabian Sea with designs on finding bin Laden’s resting place, Lindsey responded: “OK, that’ll be an interesting mission, and I hope he has a lot of money.”
Bush to make first-ever overseas deployment
May 5th, 2011 | Admirals Aviation Carriers Naval aviation Photos Ships The Med The Middle East | Posted by Bill McMichael
The vision that began with a January 2001 contract award will be fully realized on Wednesday, May 11, when the carrier George H.W. Bush leaves Norfolk to begin its first-ever combat deployment.
The George H.W. Bush, underway in the Atlantic during a 2011 training exercise. // U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Nicholas Hall
The 1,092-foot Bush is the 10th and final carrier of the Nimitz class. Commissioned in January 2009, the carrier, as well as its strike group, have been in training for this cruise for most of the past year.
The Bush Carrier Strike Group, led by Rear Adm. Nora Tyson, will consist of five total ships, eight aircraft squadrons and nearly 6,000 sailors, and will operate in the 5th and 6th Fleet areas of operation. “The George H.W. Bush Strike Group is ready to go,” Tyson said. “These sailors have worked extremely hard over the last year and we are fully prepared to execute any and all tasking in support of the nation’s Maritime Strategy.”
The Bush Strike Group includes Carrier Strike Group 2, the Bush, Carrier Air Wing 8, the Destroyer Squadron 22 staff, the cruisers Gettysburg, based at Naval Station Mayport, Fla., and Anzio, based in Norfolk, and the Norfolk-based guided-missile destroyers Truxtun and Mitscher.
Daly: Amphibious forces are more relevant than ever
April 1st, 2011 | Admirals Amphibious operations Amphibious Ready Group Gator Navy Historical Korean War Marine Corps Marine Expeditionary Unit Maritime operations Ships The Med The Middle East | Posted by Bill McMichael
The deputy commander of Fleet Forces Command used his keynote speech at the decommissioning of the amphibious assault ship Nassau in Norfolk March 31 to stump for continued support for the “Gator Navy” and the capability to launch U.S. Marines onto contested shore, arguing that such a capability reduces the need for U.S. bases on foreign shores.
Vice Adm. Peter Daly pointed to the Essex Amphibious Ready Group and the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit providing humanitarian assistance and disaster response following the earthquake and tsunami that ravaged northern Japan; the Boxer ARG and 13th MEU being accelerated into the Persian Gulf to provide what he called “essential capacity” for potential non-combatant evacuation operations and to provide the fleet with a theater reserve force; the Bataan ARG and 22nd MEU’s short-notice (120 days early) deployment to the Mediterranean to relieve the Kearsarge ARG and 26th MEU; and the Kearsarge ARG and 26th MEU’s central role in the NATO air strike campaign against Libyan forces — in particular, their rapid movement out of the 5th Fleet area of operations, where they were relieved by Boxer and the 13th MEU, to the Med, where they have provided combat sorties and air space control.
“We are witnessing a living clinic for why we need amphibious power for our Navy,” Daly said.
More than a few military analysts have questioned whether the U.S. should maintain an amphibious capability — made famous during World War II’s Pacific theater island-hopping campaign — noting that the last significant amphibious combat landings took place at Inchon during the Korean war and that weapons such as long-range missiles make large-scale amphibious assaults obsolete. Proponents argue that the ability to launch smaller-level assaults on unimproved beachfronts continues to be an important capability. The threat alone can also be an advantage, they say, pointing to the famous Persian Gulf War feint in which a large amphibious force poised off the coast of Kuwait diverted thousands of Iraqi forces from the main battlefields.
During a Dec. 2 “DoDLive” bloggers roundtable, Brig. Gen. Christopher Owens, deputy commanding general, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force, also pointed out that assault operations are but one of a wide range of possibilities on the amphibious palette and argued for keeping such a capability, while further refining concepts to “keep it relevant.”
Daly would agree.
“People often ask, `Well, maybe we don’t have to do this anymore’,” Daly said. “Maybe we don’t have to provide the bandwidth, the training and the time, and the effort and the money to do [them]. But when they were needed, they were there.”
Daly acknowledged that the capability to conduct amphibious assaults has been somewhat diluted. “The demands of land conflicts over the last decade have forced something of a separation between our Navy amphibious forces and the Marines they are designed to carry into combat,” Daly said. “Only by training together, sailing together, fighting together, can we ensure that amphibious warfare remains a premier national capability — so the country is not dependent on overseas bases, and able to conduct forcible entry without a buildup, and without a permission slip.”
Another Gulf War?
December 2nd, 2010 | Facebook Historical The Middle East | Posted by Dave Brown
Thankfully, this battle is more semantic than deadly. Thursday morning, the popular-yet-normally-benign Facebook page for the U.S. Navy was hit by cyber activists demanding that a certain body of water be referred to as the “Persian Gulf.”
The Navy, as you know, calls it the “Arabian Gulf,” although not always. The moderator of the Navy site has since struck a conciliatory tone, welcoming the new fans and inviting regulars to share their favorite Navy acronyms and jargon. Although too much alphabet soup could get them into hot water as well.
Oh, and Persian Gulf folks: Don’t bother doing the same on the Navy Times page. We already call it “Persian,” for historical reasons. But we’ll take the likers.
Aftermath and legacy
October 12th, 2010 | Ships The Middle East | Posted by Phil Ewing
A sailor aboard the destroyer Cole fired a .50 caliber machine gun during an exercise in the Atlantic in 2009. // MC3 Matthew Bookwalter / Navy
Ten years after the bombing of the destroyer Cole, could a U.S. warship today handle a similar attack? Crew members today are more alert for small boats, ships have new weapons specifically to keep potential threats at bay, and the Navy seems generally more mindful about sending ships into ports where unpleasantness might occur.
But “optimal manning,” individual augmentee assignments and other high-level changes have cut the sizes of crews on ships today significantly. In a situation where a ship needs simple, brute-force manpower to control flooding, fight fires, handle injuries and all the rest of it, today’s smaller-crewed ships could be at a disadvantage, our senior colleague Bill McMichael reports:
The officer who commanded the [Cole] said adequate manpower is critical to such a prodigious damage-control effort, and he doubts whether a lesser-manned ship could pull it off for long.
“I think it is going to be very questionable,” said retired Cmdr. Kirk Lippold. “While you may be able to train a crew that could respond and contain the initial damage, the ability of the ship to sustain itself for the extended period of time over days, if not weeks, like we had to do … that means you’re going to man the same number of watches for damage control, your flooding and shoring watches. You’re going to still have the same security requirements. And people are going to have to rotate through the watches quicker, or stand extended watches — which means they’re going to be more tired.
“We were already at some point operating at the limits of our physical and mental endurance,” Lippold said. “Especially after we almost lost the ship, Saturday night — Sunday morning. … And while I could exhort them, as the CO, that we had to keep going and we couldn’t give up, you’re going to reach a point where people physically cannot function effectively anymore. And at that point, you make mistakes, and you will lose the ship.”
What do you think?
Can the Navy close the flying boat gap?
September 28th, 2010 | Foreign navies Ships The Middle East | Posted by Phil Ewing
One of Iran's new squadrons of Bavar 2 flying boats prepared to sortie in an official photo. // Iran Defense Ministry via AP
Zounds! That dastardly Chief Commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Mohammad Ali Jafari — he’s done it again! First he built a navy with 100 vessels for every one U.S. warship, then he built an indefatigable 60-knot attack craft and now, worst of all, he’s fielding entire squadrons of flying boats! That’s right: If American aircraft try to chase them, they can set down on the water and become boats — but if an American ship tries to chase them, they can take off and become aircraft! Gee willikers! These guys are always one step ahead!
Oh, and it gets worse for the helpless U.S. Navy: In this promotional video, the IRGC describes its new flying boats as capable of hitting “100 knots per hour” and of being “undetectable by any naval or aerial radar.” (A ‘knot’ already means a nautical mile per hour, but skip that for now.) So how many flying boats does the U.S. Navy have to go up against this new threat? A big goose egg, that’s how many. But America’s radio-controlled “hydrofoam” hobbyists may have the solution. When Naval Sea Systems Command gets an urgent needs statement about this capability — and it will — it should start by checking this baby out.
The machine gun-armed Bavar 2 kamikaze flying boats apparently were not designed for survivability: They have open cockpits and exposed motors for their three-bladed pusher propellers — but they could, in theory, become the air component in the swarm attacks we’ve so often discussed. The IRGC seems to be betting that it can sortie more boats — flying and traditional — against a hostile warship than that warship has missiles and ammunition.
Could it work? What do you think?
One of Iran's new Bavar 2 flying boats in action. Doesn't it look exactly like one of these radio-controlled hydrofoam toys? // Iran Defense Ministry via AP
Swarm warning
August 25th, 2010 | Aviation The Middle East | Posted by Phil Ewing
Action movie directors are encouraged to make a summer blockbuster that includes Marine Corps AH-1W Super Cobras defending a Navy strike group against a small-boat swarm attack. Because that would be epic. // MCSN Chad Erdmann / Navy
Eagle1 has some great coverage this week about Iran’s invincible, 29,000-vessel strong hyper-navy, which has just added a new, unstoppable, 60 knot missile-armed small attack craft. This sounds like another one of those game over situations; when Congress comes back from summer vacation, it might as well just disestablish the Navy and liquidate the fleet.
But hold on a tick! Eagle1 seems a little skeptical that the massive swarm-attack spells doom for American seapower in the Middle East. No matter how fast your missile-attack jet-boat, he writes, and no matter how many of them you’ve got, there’s still the matter of deploying them with a coherent strategy and with enough surprise that they can get close enough to attack:
To reiterate, it’s really hard to hide 20 or 30 or 100 boats getting underway and trying to sneak around in an area like the Persian/Arabian Gulf. Faster boats don’t add much to the picture — except they make faster fireballs flaming across the water.
The detail that seems to be missing from all the reports this week is whether there’s an anti-air component to Iran’s swarm strategy. In the notional Persian Gulf dust-up we all hope never happens, attack jets and helicopters would likely be what U.S. commanders send against the swarm, rather than letting things devolve into the knife fight the Iranians apparently want. (Those splashy, bouncy watercraft are said to make great targets for air-to-surface missiles.) So do the Iranians just assume they’ll have more boats than the Navy has weapons? Or would they also try to contest the ocean airspace as a part of their monstrous wave of death? If so, how? An aircraft swarm?
Off you go, then
August 23rd, 2010 | Carriers Maritime operations The Middle East | Posted by Phil Ewing
The Iranian mariners rescued by the carrier Harry S. Truman waved goodbye as a ship's boat ferried them to an Iranian warship. // MCSN Tyler Caswell / Navy
After what must have felt like a long interlude as guests of the U.S. Navy, eight Iranian seafarers are — one presumes — on their way home again. Helicopters from the carrier Harry S. Truman rescued the men last week after their vessel caught fire in the Arabian Sea, and the Americans sailors fed, clothed and took care of them after the ordeal. The crew of the Truman, at no extra charge, contacted an Iranian warship and ferried the mariners to it via small boat.
This is from a 5th Fleet announcement: “Speaking through a translator assigned to Truman, the fishermen expressed their gratitude for the treatment they received while aboard the aircraft carrier. The translator also conveyed that the fisherman prayed for and blessed the pilots and medical team who had helped them.”
Now, see? Isn’t that nice? See how much nicer it is when you don’t abduct people and cause an international incident?