Anyone watch "Carrier" on PBS last night?

Cafe Society
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The US military has been described as similar to the old Soviet Union: savage but concealed infighting at the top; a massive layer of bureaucracy in the middle; and miserable foot-draggers at the bottom.

You’re not alone, but I’ve found that the only thing less welcome than boring old sea stories are boring, bitter old sea stories. I eventually resolved it by applying the “because our caveman ancestors…” explanation: The nasy old men in power instinctively feed the powerless young men into the meat grinder so that they have priority access to the breeding females. Probably not true, but it keeps grinding and I need some way to accept it.

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Given that scenario? Not much. Maybe a note in the POD, again, about the hazards of being topside after dark - and a word to the fantail watches that one of the things they’re there to look for are people who go overboard. Not in any kind of blaming sense, just a reminder. I wouldn’t expect the Admiral to be able to find some magic cure for going overboard - just that’s where I think his need to be seen Doing Something might have been more profitably focused.

I agree that there’s a lot of awareness training for crew to be aware of the hazards of going overboard. I have to admit there were times (not many) that I snuck out onto the weather decks at night to get a view of the night sky. There is something about seeing the night sky while a hundred miles from any land that is wonderful and awesome. It’s tempting.

I’d like to emphasize my knowledge of flight deck ops can be written on the head of a pin, with space left over. I was a cruiser nuke, not carrier, so there are going to be only some areas of congruence.

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Been there, done that. Your right. Absolutely stunning to me. (Maybe not so much for folks who grew up in rural areas. :slight_smile: )

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A tall ship, and a star to steer her by. There is something special about it.

I know I don’t really have the creds to be posting here, but it is a fascinating thread.

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As to the Navy being intolerant of young officers’ mistakes nowadays… ironically enough, a 22-year-old ensign named Chester Nimitz once ran the destroyer USS Decatur aground on a mudbank, was court-martialed and received a letter of reprimand. His later career won him some minor repute.

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3,000 healthy, sober, bored, well-rested 18-22 year-olds in a floating prison…

…versus…

…3,000 healthy, sober, bored, too-tired-to-think-straight 18-22 year-olds in a floating prison.

Which would you rather be surrounded by? :smiley:

Echoing robby on the ‘bitter and cynical’ note, but I’m enjoying the show regardless. “Yes, that’s EXACTLY what it’s like - on shore commands, too! Only we had more liquor.”

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This thread took a weird turn, I was a hard working but thorough FtN’er when I was in the Navy. I opted out of the Nuke program as the recruiter had tricked me (I know big shock on that one) and told me I would be an ET. Instead in Boot camp I was told I would be trained as an EM. So my 6 year commitment and plan to do 20 years quickly became a 4 years and out plan. I started counting down by days left at 1000.

However, I was in and committed, I still believe in what we were doing and I did my best. I had actually passed my E5 but I needed to extend to get it and still chose to get the hell home as quick as I could.

I don’t regret my service time, I am glad and proud of it. I made some good friends. Two that I managed to stay in touch with to this day. My electrician training came in handy and got me a good job shortly after I got out.

My biggest regret is my timing was poor and I only had VEEP and not a GI bill. The GI Bill is much better than VEEP. I had managed to save enough money while I was in to put myself in good shape for going to college while working full time. I was then socking away money to go full time once I got my associates but then my life changed radically and I ended up a Computer Programmer instead of an Electrical Engineer.

I found more officers to be fair than not and almost every Chief was fair. I was never the most gung-ho sailor and I often got into minor trouble, but I more than made up for it with both the amount and quality of my work. The Chiefs and the various 1st and 2nd class petty officers that ran my shops always swept the petty stuff under the carpet. So I found them very fair.

Jim

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This old chestnut gets brought up every time a junior officer screws up. Nevertheless, officers who receive letters of reprimand no longer make admiral, to say the least.

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/me cosies up to the computer screen awaiting shellback ceremony sea stories. :smiley:

150

I thought the enlisted USN pecking order went something like:

Lower: E1-E3 {Seamen, Airmen …}
Middle:E4-E6 {Petty Officers}
Senior:E7-E9 {Chief Petty Officers}.

As for the line officers, the basic pattern is that O5{Commander} officers can command small-to-medium sized ships like submarines and destroyers or frigates.

Captains(O-6) can command the larger ships, and may command groups of smaller ships.

And on a sufficiently large ship, any number of officers may have rank level equal to the commanding officer, but fall below the CO in terms of authority.

It isn’t unusual to have the CO, XO and CAG all at O-6 on a carrier.

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Close, but not quite.

E-4 is much closer to lower than middle. E-5s and E-6s have more responsibility. The E-5’s are really in the middle, the E-6s can have significant authority (leading petty officer of a division, for instance. Some guys retire at E-6.)

There is a huge jump from E-6 to E-7 - chief and higher, so much so that there is an elaborate initiation ceremony surrounding this.

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Another strong pair of episodes, I thought.

Why’d that redshirt run across the flight deck? Yikes. I’d like to have seen what the captain said to him.

By all means, let’s hear some pollywog/shellback stories, ex-Navy Dopers!

I’d be puking like a mfer with the deck rising and falling 30 feet like that. Oy.

I loved that the pilots were eating popcorn as they watched their buddies try to make a night landing on a pitching deck.

Great to see the Wiccans meeting - the Pentecostal service - the Catholic priest pausing for the cats to quiet down - etc. But just 2 Jewish guys on a ship that size? Hard to believe.

I about lost it when the pilots were all in their red leisure suits. Too much.

The sequence on true friends was very touching.

My local PBS listings show tonight’s episodes (#7-8) as the last of the series. But then they showed previews for the next episode(s) - WTF? It’s a ten-part series, I thought.

153

Holy crap I had no idea a friggin carrier could pitch that much. And my heart is still pounding from watching those guys try to land on it at night.

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The thing about carriers is that they have to accommodate a great deal more ‘flex’ than other vessels. I don’t know what was shown, but AIUI Nimitz-class ships have one or two passageways that run much of the length of the ship. And people with sensitive stomachs stay out of them during heavy sea states.

You’ll be leaning to port and looking aft, down the length of the ship, and you’ll someone down there leaning to starboard. :eek:

Of course, you don’t need to be on a carrier to have problems with heavy sea states.

During the 1993 “Storm of the Century” we were at sea. Nominally we were part of a NATO exercise group. The weather got so bad that we had ships all over the South Atlantic. We were in 40-50 foot swells, and rolling port-to-starboard from 30 degrees port, to 30 starboard. Now consider, too, that the bow and stern were also rising and falling. That was bad enough. What was worse was what would happen as one shaft, then the other would rise out of the water: First you’d hear the shaft bearing squeal. These bearings on the struts below the hull are usually lubricated by seawater. Take away the seawater, and they start to squeal. And you could hear it 600 feet away at the bow. Then the blades of the screw would start to come out of the water. With the resistance of the water freeing the screw to spin faster, the squeal would rise in pitch, and volume. Then the whole ship would shake as the leading edge of the blade hits the water, and brakes back to the nominal shaft speed. And this cycle was being repeated three times for every shaft RPM we were making. We called that “the shimmie-shakes” and it was the vibration from that really got to me.

One third of our crew was incapacitated. Not simply sea-sick - in their racks wishing the ship would hurry-up and sink, so they’d be out of their misery. Watchstanders were doing port-and-starboard duty, because we were so short of people who were able to stand watch. And half of those “able-bodied” people were still going around puking, they just weren’t so bad off that they couldn’t do anything else.

And at this, we were in far better shape than some of the other ships in the formation. We displaced about 12,000 tonnes, and were probably the heaviest and largest ship in the formation. There was another USN vessel with us, a Spruance-class destroyer, at about 9,000 tonnes. Then there was the British destroyer at about 8,000 tonnes. Everything else was 3-5000 tonnes. They were getting tossed around like bathtub toys.

One of the smallest ships lost their shaft seal. Which are the devices that keep water from flooding back into the engineroom along the propeller shaft. Most ships have an emergency shaft seal, but they’re often inflatable systems, meant as a last resort. And will only seal the shaft when it’s motionless. Going DIW while in a major storm comes under the category of bad idea. So, they had all their bilge pumps running, some fire-fighting de-watering equipment running and still they were losing ground.

By the time the storm was over, the formation was a joke. We had ships from Boston to The Bahamas. One ship had it’s gun knocked off its mounting ring (with the accompanying flooding from that). The British destroyer I’d mentioned was the only foreign flagged ship that stayed with us. And she sent over a 20 item damage list, ranging from antennae torn off the ship, to non-skid ripped from the deck, to the door to the helo hanger having been stove in about six inches.

(I think this is much more interesting than my Shellback experience. That was just gross fun.)

155

Going back in the thread, can someone please tell me what a snipe is? Besides something you go hunt at night, of course. :wink:

And yes, shellback stories, please!

156

“Snipe” is a time-honored term for engineering crew aboard naval vessels. I have no answer for where it came from. (I can guess, but nothing I’d call definitive.)

157

This show has some of the worst music I have ever heard. Its like “Church Rock” or something.

Overall, on a scale of 1-10, I give it about a 4. Kinda like a big, long commercial. Not much substance. One of PBS’s weaker efforts.

158

I heard somewhere that all the music came from the crew’s own personal music. So this was all stuff that was being listened to by someone aboard. Which makes the odd selection a bit more understandable.

159

I would think 12 on/12 off would be the sleep norm. I don’t understand the shorter shifts.

Also wondered what options the deck hands would have for rescue. Can they carry flare guns or other devices besides the lights if they fall over?

The night landings made me cringe. Landing on poorly lit grass strips seems like a cakewalk after watching that.

160

Ok! Quit twistin’ my arm!

I crossed over into the grand and glorious realm of Neptunus Rex in November of 1983 aboard my first ship, the USS Yosemite. We were, I was told, the first U.S. Navy ship to cross the line with women as part of the ship’s crew. As I was one of the first of the crew to go through the rite (One of my collateral duties as a JOSA was ship’s photographer), I was able to meander up and down the line of initiation to take photographs. All “Royal” parts are played by trusty, crusty Shellbacks

One note though. The ceremony has changed a lot. As I watched the show last night I couldn’t help but think it had been “pussified.” When I went through there was little guidance from Big Navy. Some of the things I’ll mention seem horrific, but as you are going through it with the entire crew it didn’t seem as bad. You just kept your head down and gutted it out. Curiously, when I was putting together the Cruisebook for this deployment all my photos of the initiation were confiscated. Less than four months later, guidance came down from on high on how to conduct crossing the line ceremonies with women embarked.

The initiation varied from ship to ship but here’s how we did it on the Yo-Yo.

The ceremony takes a day and a half. The afternoon and evening prior to crossing the line is called Wog night.

Davy Jones is hoisted aboard and reports to the captain on the bridge. The captain requests permission to cross the line. Davy asks a few questions about how many of King Neptune’s subjects are aboard and then requests permission to inspect the ship to see if it is suitable for crossing.

Inevitably, he finds the ship unsuitable as it is infested with lowly Pollywogs. The Captain then asks if he can make any type of offering which would change Davy’s decision.

“Well, Skipper,” Davy says, “If you can prove that each and every slimy wog is worthy to humbly prostrate himself or herself befor King Neptune, maybe… just maybe… the King will allow you to pass.”

Davy then instructs the Skipper to prepare each of his wogs to present themselves before the King. A time is given for the King to arrive the following day and all preparations must be made by then. Davy empowers the ship’s Shellbacks to do their duty as subjects of King Neptune and prepare the wogs for his royal presence.

Davy then tells the Skipper that the King will require the services of a lovely queen for the day as well as a loyal dog. Davy presents the skipper with the Jolly Roger to fly while King Neptune is aboard. The CO then accompanied Davy to the helo pad so that he may judge the beauty pagent and dog competition.

All this is played out over the 1MC so the entire crew can hear it.

The Skipper passes the Jolly Roger to the Royal Quartermaster for safe keeping.

Shellbacks have prepared for this day in advance. We had 12 Sailors dressed as women and about 30 dogs. Young Sailors were eager to be selected for these two positions as whoever was chosen would sit beside King Neptune all day and they wouldn’t have to go through the initiation.

Once the queen was selected, the dogs “fought” on their hands and knees. The most aggressive dog wins. Davy’s decision was final.

After the evening’s activities were finished and Davy had departed over the side, the Skipper addressed the crew. Wogs were to be in their racks at taps. No exceptions.

It is rumored that if the Wogs can steal the Jolly Roger before midnight, they may use it as ransom to force the King to allow the ship across the line with no initiation.

Hell broke loose on the ship. At one point wogs were roaming this ship seeking any and all Shellbacks. The crusty had holed themselves up in the wardroom, chiefs mess and other isolated spaces so they would noyt be caught by marauding packs of Wogs.

The Royal quartermaster and a few other shellbacks had locked themselves in the ship’s armory on the fo’c’s’le with the Jolly Roger. The Skipper called quits to the evening and ordered everyone to their berthing spaces when he discovered that a particularly dedicated band of wogs was in the process of using an acetylene torch to burn off the hinges to the armory’s door!

The evening concluded.

To be continued…