What consequences, if any, followed for the pinhead(s) who didn’t tie her down correctly?
Assuming no sharks or other unfriendly critters, how long could a physically fit, uniformed but otherwise unprotected sailor expect to remain alive in the waters of the Persian Gulf in autumn? (The Princeton sailor was lost sometime after the shipboard 9-11 remembrances).
I was on the USS Carl Vinson from 1989 to 1991. I did not catch the whole show, but I was wondering if there was any coverage about:
B) Midrats. Nothing like missing both lunch AND dinner, and finding a tub half filled with dry chicken patty sandwiches. In the dark.
Are they also going to cover a Crossing the Line Ceremony? And speaking of lines, the slowest one is for liberty in a foreign port, as they go by rank. If you were an E3 or below, you’d almost need a haircut before you got off of the boat.
The survivors of the Indianapolis survived for three days, IIRC, many completely in the water before any help came. As long as water temperature is near body temperature and hypothermia isn’t a concern, there’s no limit for how long a person can float in the water - the problem then becomes thirst, exposure, or starvation.
So how cold is the Persian Gulf at that time of year?
IIRC, they said the water was 66 deg F in the show last night.
Current water temps are in the eighties in the Gulf. At that temperature shark attacks and exhaustion are a bigger danger than cold exposure.
Which for water is hypothermia temperatures. Here’s a cite with a table showing estimated survival times.
ETA: I was responding to robby’s cite for 66 F, not Mr. Moto’s warmer current temperatures.
I don’t actually know, but I am sure that the sailor or sailors found responsible were broken in rank and given a long restriction to the ship with extra duty.
I doubt a court martial would be involved though. It might be a hugely expensive screw up, but no lives were lost and these things do unfortunately happen.
mlees: I vaguely remember the copter that went down during the unrep, something went wrong with the aft rotor and either they could not or did not drop the load in time to same the copter and the load and the copter splashed down. I do recall the crew escaping, I think with some help.
In the three plus years I was on board, we thankfully had no actual machine space fires on board. Maybe you had one on the Westpac that included Perth?
Jim
While I was stationed aboard the USS Yosemite as a very junior sailor, I was one of the firefighters flown onto the *Ranger * to help fight the main space fire. We brought over backup OBAs and a shitload (that’d be the metric measurement) of canisters.
We never actually entered the main space to fight the fire, rather we formed back up teams in the hangar bays and mess decks and helped relieved teams switch out canisters, cool down, etc. All in all a long day for us, but longer for the guys manning Ranger’s repair lockers.
Pardon a quick threadjack, but I think this is a big part of the problem that ex-military folks (conservatives anyway) see in civilian society. They don’t necessarily put it this way, but they wish fear motivation and ass-chewing were a more common in our culture, because in their experience, they worked.
The chance of being left sitting on the fantail whilst yer closest shipmates get to live it up in Palma de Mallorca after 67 days on Beno Station is a great motivator too.
What would have been an improvement in your view? More? Less? Different words? It’s hard for me to fathom impugning upon a military commander phoniness about his concern for his men. I’m just wondering what a person who thinks otherwise might have expected to hear.
I assume all you swabbies have seen the film that runs on Discovery channel periodically about the Forrestal fire. The footage is amazing and the sound track is terrifying. When the PA keeps repeating “Fire on the Flight Deck, all hands lend assistance” and you see the bombs cooking off in the fire, it’s just surreal. When you realize that most of the front line fire fighters were killed pretty early on, it’s amazing that the ship survived.
All squids know this film.
The flight deck footage (shot from the plat camera with some shots from the embedded deck camera) was used to make a basic damage control film. This film was shown during day 1 hour, 1 of damage control class during boot camp. Most ships used it in their DC training programs too.
Kinda like, “THIS is what can happen. What you learn here in IMPORTANT.”
If you’ve ever seen it, you’ll remember “PKP Guy.”
Does any one remember the “Seven Deadly Sins” DC training film?
I just felt he went on overly long about it, without ever mentioning the 800-lb gorilla in the room, which is that the chance of finding a sailor lost sometime in the last day or so is slim to none.
And he was having this conversation with a LTJG, who is about 6 rungs down the chain-of-command from him. It smacks of the President visiting a disaster area to properly register his concern. It’s pandering.
I freely admit, though, that I’m pretty cynical about most senior Navy officers. In my eyes, this guy’s an admiral, so he’s almost certainly a politician, and therefore a phony.
I’ll add that this last couple of episodes has been stirring up a lot of repressed memories for me. I entered the Navy nearly 20 years ago as a naive, fresh-faced ensign who thought that the Navy would be fair and reward hard work. It didn’t take long for me to find out that the reality didn’t match the rhetoric. I left the fleet pretty bitter and cynical, and this is likely influencing my impression of events in the show.
Can’t remember much about “Seven Deadly Sins”, but I seem to recall seeing it.
Interesting about that Forrestal disaster is that that Zuni rocket hit an external tank on a Skyhawk and caused a group of them sitting together, manned and ready to go, to go up in flames. One of the guys caught in this was John McCain, who opened his cockpit, walked down the nose and onto the refueling probe, and jumped onto the deck. One minute later a 1000-lb bomb blew up right under his plane, blasting a crater into the deck and killing the firefighting crew.
He could have gone home after this. Instead he transferred to the Oriskany. In October of that same year he was shot down and taken prisoner.
I don’t think McCain remembers 1967 fondly. But the same could be said about any Forrestal sailor back then. Frankly, the ship was cursed from the start - you should never name a ship after a defense secretary who killed himself.
I didn’t see the show, but this is exactly what was going through my mind. A more honest approach would seem to me to be: “Goddammit. I hope I’m wrong, and we’re going to look for that sailor. But let’s be honest, in these temperature waters, he’ll have to have been very lucky to still be alive, and we’ll have to be luckier to find him, now.”
Addressing the causes of the incident would play better to my mind: Asking why someone was out on the weather decks after lights out, or trying to figure out why the fantail watch didn’t see the guy going over, would make more sense. Not in a witchhunt, or “who can we blame for this” manner, just - what can we do to prevent this.
I have to admit, that while my experiences were different from robby’s, notably I was blue-shirt scum to his zero-ness, I ended up almost as bitter as he’s describing himself. And I tend to hear the pronouncements of high ranking zeros through a bit of a haze of mistrust, and antagonism. Most of which was earned brick by brick.
“…And I tend to hear the pronouncements of high ranking zeros through a bit of a haze of mistrust, and antagonism.”
That sounds about right.
It’s very strange how this show has been affecting me. It’s not like watching two hours of Top Gun or The Hunt for Red October or Crimson Tide or any other similarly unrealistic Hollywood movie.
It’s also unlike any military documentary I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a bunch, virtually all of which tend to focus on the technology.
I’ve watched this show for three nights now, for a total of six hours. It’s showed a Senior Sailor of the Quarter flushing his career down the toilet for his inexcusable actions–and he got off extremely lightly. It’s showed a guy telling his CO that he’s a racist just to get off the ship. It’s showed a young, naive, insecure sailor talking to his self-centered, flighty, pregnant girlfriend–he’s trying to do the right thing, but he can’t help wondering what’s going on back home. The hell of it is that his suspicions are probably correct. Girls that age need lots of attention, and if he’s out of the picture, she’ll get the attention somewhere else. I guarantee that their relationship will not survive this deployment. He’s making plans of a future with her on a foundation of sand.
The show has depicted a young pilot, who because of a series of missteps that snowballed on themselves (what we used to call a cascading casualty), now finds his career in jeopardy. And I think his smarmy, smirking CO has hung him out to dry.
The show has also had its high points, depicting patriotic Sailors and Marines serving their country on board one of the most powerful warships ever built. And that country is my country, the United States of America.
It’s also shown these Americans and this task force being used to support one of the stupidest foreign entanglements this country has ever gotten involved in. A multi-billion dollar task force and thousands of personnel are being used so that a a pair of $60-million dollar strike aircraft can do a fly-by in hopes of scaring some insurgents. :rolleyes: What a waste of our national resources and our treasure. Those service members know it, too.
For many reasons, this show has really put me into a funk.
All in all, and all that being said, I think it’s a pretty damn realistic portrayal of the modern U.S. Navy.
There was a fuel oil fire, but not serious, IIRC. It got locked down quick.
OtakuLoki, and robby, thank you for your honest self appraisal.
I didn’t see the show, so I can’t do more than speculate why the Admiral said what he did, for as long as he did.
Maybe he was asked by the show’s producers to explain the situation for the audience’s benefit. Maybe this was the j.g.'s first “at sea” period, and was qualifying for O.O.D. or Air Control Officer (where he would be supervising some aspect of the search), and needed this explained (although it should be coming from the O.O.D. actually on watch). Just tossing out some (probably not well thought out) ideas, here.
Maybe. But I know that that kind of training is already extensive, at least on the enlisted side. Training in situational awareness, I mean. (Don’t walk behind a jet, etc.)
“Why was this man walking on the fantail at night?”
“The guy was a known dip shit, sir, and he went out for a smoke.”
Given that info, what more can the Admiral say? What is there to fix?