Does the US Navy still have “flagships” or is that an obsolete term?
And if so, where can I find out what our current flagship is?
Flagship for the entire Navy? Dunno.
A fleet will have a flagship though. I think the flagship of the Seventh Fleet is the USS Blue Ridge, IIRC.
When we were in Japan in the 1960s my my father was the communications officer aboard one of the flagships for the Seventh Fleet. There were two flagships: CLG-5 USS Oklahoma City (dad’s ship) and CLG-6 USS Providence. One ship would be deployed while the other was at home, and they’d trade places every six months. I was never in the Navy myself (high school injury) but I believe the “flagship” is the ship that carries the Admiral’s flag – i.e., the admiral of that fleet is aboard. Since there are several fleets, there would be several flagships.
One of our Navy Dopers will no doubt be by shortly.
According to this site:
The Second Fleet (Atlantic), based out of Norfolk, VA, uses USS Mount Whitney (LCC 20) as its flagship.
The Third Fleet (East Pacific), based out of San Diego, uses USS Coronado (AGF 11) as its headquarters (not “flagship”, apparently).
The Fifth Fleet (Persian Gulf) page doesn’t list a command ship.
The Sixth Fleet (Mediterranean) uses the command ship USS LaSalle (AGF-3)
Finally, the Seventh Fleet (West Pacific) is headquartered from the aformentioned USS Blue Ridge (LCC 19).
USS Constitution is the flagship of the Third Naval District.
As Johnny L.A. said every admiral (or general for that matter) travels with a flag with the appropriate number of stars be it on a jeep or aircraft carrier. Transferring the flag from one ship to another is a major big hairy ass deal. Even when the admiral is just walking abord the gangplank or arrives via aircraft the OOD doesn’t say his name but his position as “Pacific fleet, arriving.” The skipper is referred to by the ship’s name. The flag officer’s area is spruced up a bit better than the rest of the quarters on the carriers I was on, Ranger and Constellation, and was decked in blue tile. Woe be to the sailor who got his greasy boots on that tile without good reason. FWIW I discovered that “general quarters all hands man your battle stations this is not a drill” is a sufficent excuse. 
I just know there’s going to be some stunningly simple answer…but what/where are/were the first and fourthfleets? Or was av8rmike only giving the answers he knew?
check out the link av8rmike provided. It explains what the deal was with the 1st and 4th fleets
critter42
Got it!
‘Must remember to read links’…I’ll write it out a hundred times;)
So, taking critter42’s advice, the Fifth fleet is a recent re-creation (1995), is operationally derived from the Pacific and Atlantic Fleets, and is headquartered at Manama, Bahrain. Thus, we can deduce that there is most likely no flagship for the Fifth Fleet.
That’s weird (to my mind at least) that the USS Coronado and USS LaSalle are flagships. Those are amphibious transports…they don’t seem sufficient somehow. The USS Mount Whitney and USS BLue Ridge seem to be Command and Control (C&C) ships so I guess they make mroe sense (I would suppose they are bristling with communications equipment and such).
Still, I would assume an Admiral would want his gold plated ass in something more macho such as a carrier or cruiser. I would think a carrier has damned good C&C capabilities as well as an Aegis cruiser but I couldn’t say for certain.
Just out of curiosity…when an Admiral is aboard does he supplant the Captain as Lord of the Ship? That is, what if the Admiral and Captain give conflicting orders? Say the Admiral tells the helmsman to turn to port and the Captain says turn to starboard. Which way had the helmsman better turn the wheel? I understand a good Admiral should leave the operation of the ship to the Captain and a Captain had better have a dmaned good reason to countemand orders given by the Admiral but if push-came-to-shove who wins in my hypothetical power struggle?
An admiral commanding a fleet has a flag designating his HQ, which is flown on whatever ship he chooses, which then becomes the flagship for that fleet.
The idea dates from the days of sail, when the flagship flew the admiral’s pennon from one of its masts – which clued the captains of the other ships into which ship to look to for signals about what the admiral wanted the rest of the ships of the fleet to be doing at that given point of the battle.
IIRC, the “flagship” of the admiral commanding in the Philippines during the Bataan/Corregidor days was a submarine – that being the only U.S. ship able to operate against the Combined Japanese Fleet in the area in those just-post-Pearl-Harbor times.
IANASailr, but as I understand it, an admiral must direct all orders through the skipper, who has undisputed control of that ship. Whack-a-Mole’s hypothetical helmsman must wait for the captain to confirm any order given by the admiral before carrying out that order. Note that anyone in command of a ship is called “captain”, even though they may be a lowly lieutenant.
Admirals don’t give orders to helmsmen; they direct the actions of ships (and groups of ships) by issuing orders to their captains. On each ship, there is an Officer of the Deck who actually issues instructions to the helmsman; these instructions are supposed to be fully in accordance with the captain’s wishes, but the helmsman does not check with the captain before acting on them.
Things can get slightly complicated on board the flagship, which is simply the vessel on which the Admiral (and his staff) happen to be embarked. Tradition has it that the Admiral does not interfere with, or even comment on, the way that ship operates (except possibly in private, directly to that ship’s captain) – he treats it the same as he does the ship that’s over the horizon. Sometimes this is a little unrealistic in practice.
Understood Xema. As I said I doubt an Admiral would muck about in the operations of a specific ship. You can replace my hypothetical helmsman with the OOD as well but the question still stands. Assume some circumstance has arisen where the Admiral and Captain are at odds over what the ship should do and issue conflicting orders. I don’t doubt such circumstances are extremely rare but I also wouldn’t be surprised if it’s happened on occasion. So far it sounds like the Captain is King aboard the ship and the Admiral is the High Priest. Everyone technically should listen to the King as he is the law…the High Priest just owns your soul. I suppose the Admiral might try releiving the Captain of his duties and take command himself but I imagine that’d be a dicey affair for all involved. In the end Captain wins the immediate control battle and the crap will hit the fan at a later date.
You are right, the Captain is king. And, properly speaking, there can’t be conflicting orders - the Captain has sole responsibility for how his ship is run; the Admiral has none at all. An Admiral’s “order” to the OOD or a helmsman would have the same force as if you phoned the control tower at your local airport and “ordered” them to do things a certain way.
In the real world, has an Admiral ever given an improper “order” of this type? Must have happened somewhere. If he was worth his salt, he’d be immediately and deeply embarrassed about such a serious failure to respect the chain of command (upon the observance of which depends all of his authority and power).
As long as we’re on the subject of chain of command and legality, what about in battle? Say the admiral (an experienced Sea Dog) is commanding the fleet, and his flagship is hit. The captain, first officer, and the other senior command officers are killed or incapacitated. On that specific ship, the next in the chain of command is Lt. Commander Jones, new to the rank, and someone without practical battle command experience. Would the admiral (with far more command experience – he worked his way up, commanding a ship for some time) be legally justified in overriding the Lt. Commander immediately (before the guy even had a chance to give an order) and taking command of the ship himself?
In the absence of action by the proper higher authority, command devolves upon the most senior officer still alive and functioning. (Note that it would be rare for a LtCdr to be very far down the chain of command.)
But the Admiral is basically the proper higher authority, so the case you describe might make some sense. In practice in such a case, the Admiral would probably have a great deal to do without burdening himself with the details of running the flagship. He’d probably say to the LtCdr “Carry on, and feel free to consult me if you’d like.”
Of course, all of this discussion just points out how dumb it was that the USS Enterprise-D was the “flagship” of the Federation, when the only time an Admiral ever came aboard was to screw things up.
Each officer does his job and gives orders through the normal channels. Giving orders directly by skipping intermediate levels is just not done because it would lead to resentment and degradation of discipline. It is not the job or place of the admiral to give orders to the sailors and if he did it it would be seen as an insult to the officers whose job it is to do it and a lowering of himself to do what is not his job. But this is not restricted to the military world and anyone in aposition of authority knows it. An architect supervising a construction site would not be giving orders to the construction workers as it is not his job and would make him look foolish and lacking respect for the foreman and other people in charge. The architect says what he wants done but it is the prerogative of the site manager to decide who and how wil do it and the architect would be out of bounds giving orders.
From time immemorial, in ships, whether merchant or naval, but even more so on naval vessels, there has been a strict division of authority and responsibility. In a merchantman the captain or master would give general orders to the mate who would carry them out at his discretion. The master would not interfere as that would be seen by the men as a dissing of the mate. I forget where but I remember reading an incident where the master started giving orders to the men and the mate told him to get stuffed and it let to a major revolt onboard. You cannot have two people giving orders and the whole command structure depends on everyone knowing who they take orders from. The master is in general command of the ship but the mate is the only one in charge of giving orders to the men.
The master would say to the mate: Mr Mate, set the topgallant.
The mate would respond: “set the topgallant. Aye, aye, sir” and then proceed to give orders to the men. If the master had anything to say he would say it to the mate (and preferably later, in private). Interfering with the authority of your subordinates is the quickest way to lose your own authority. The higher ups will naturally reinforce the authority of their subordinates because their own authority depends on it.
The admiral commands the fleet as a whole and does not command the ship he is on. He understands that and the master understand that. Furthermore, the admiral is not going to be at the wheelhouse anyway so the idea that he’d be giving orders to the man at the wheel is kind of silly. That is not the concern of the admiral.
Admiral Nelson gave the general orders to the fleet but as the battle commenced he was standing n the quarterdeck watching and staying out of people’s way. In the height of the battle he was not interfering with the captain of the ship but rather he was standing by. That’s what he was doing when he was shot dead aboard the Victory in Trafalgar.