I agree with your sentiments. I knew who Dorie Miller was mainly because the barracks I lived in while attending A-school was named after him. He was in Tora! Tora! Tora! long before that wretched Michael Bay feature, something like a three-second shot of him firing a Ma Deuce with no dialog IIRC but the actor got a screen credit
Unfortunately, as the second link (“continued intermittently”) above points out it’s a navy tradition to suck up to Presidents, living and dead. What would tickle me is if the FF(X) frigates had six of them named after the original six, Constitution II I suppose.
Re: Mitchell, in his report, “Strategical Aspect of the Pacific Problem”,
Of note, Mitchell discounted the value of aircraft carriers in an attack on the Hawaiian Islands, believing they were of little practical use because they could not operate effectively on the high seas or deliver “sufficient aircraft in the air at one time to insure a concentrated operation”.
They should have stuck with naming them with famous battles and historical vessels. Political figures especially are always going to piss somebody off no matter what. Yorktown, Essex, Coral Sea, Ticonderoga etc. “Gerald Ford”? Really??
In 1988, I attended the commissioning ceremony of the USS San Jacinto (CG-56), which was commissioned right next to its namesake battlefield (the final and decisive battle for Texas independence in 1836). Five or six years later, I participated in an exercise against her (I was on a submarine). She was very good—she somehow abruptly changed course and zigged right after every [exercise] torpedo we shot at her.
The “Ticos” were supplemented and ultimately functionally replaced with the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers. These also had the Aegis system and newer iteration of the SPY-1D phased array radar. Despite the “destroyer” moniker, these ships were nearly as large and capable as the Ticonderoga-class cruisers. The Arleigh Burke-class destroyers are named after famous historic naval personnel (including John Paul Jones).
Battleships, as the main capital ships of the line at the time, used to be named after states. We don’t build battleships any more, so the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines and Virginia-class attack subs are now named after states.
The former Los Angeles-class attack submarines like I served on were named after cities.
Attack submarines used to be named after fish and sea creatures (like the USS Nautilus). Admiral Hyman Rickover (father of the nuclear navy) was once asked why that stopped, and he replied only partially facetiously, “Because fish don’t vote.”
Basically every new class of ship or submarine typically gets a naming scheme and “theme.” Often interspersed with random exceptions, like the the two submarines that have been named the USS Hyman G. Rickover. After the first Los Angeles-class sub was named after him, Rickover reportedly remarked sardonically, “It should have been a carrier.” (Despite this, to get a second vessel named after a person after the first one is decommissioned is a great honor.)
Ha! Rickover should get a whole thread by hisself. I think they basically forced him to retire after 50 years or something like that, and even then through some jiggery-pokery.
Coin collectors sort of have a similar complaint. US coin designs were generic stylized “Liberty” themes. Then they put Lincoln on the penny, in lieu of an American Indian. Washington, Jefferson, and Roosevelt followed. Franklin, never a president, was expunged for the slain JFK. (Many years ago, someone insisted to me that was Truman’s visage on the dime, not Roosevelt. I think he actually wanted to fight me when I insisted, no, that’s FDR. So, alcohol may have been involved, I let it drop. LOL. It does kinda like ole Harry, if you squint, I guess)
To be fair to Mitchell, he wrote that in 1924, at a time when the US Navy had exactly one carrier: the USS Langley, CV-1, was a converted collier carrying about three dozen bi-planes.
Not everyone gets to serve on something like the Hammerhead or the Piranha. Sometimes you’re stuck on the Grouper, the Halibut or the Herring. I see they never made a USS Sardine.
I dunno. Ask one of the 33 enemy ships sunk by the USS Tang (SS-306) in less than a year in 1944 in the war in the Pacific. The commanding officer got the Medal of Honor for her final combat action, despite the fact that she was struck and sank by one of her own torpedoes during a harrowing battle against a large Japanese convoy.
Anyway, a tang is a small tropical fish. I think they were running out of fish names at some point.
Defective torpedoes are one of the lesser known aspects of the war. It was a huge scandal at the time. They cost around $10,000 a piece, so the USN decided they didn’t need to be tested. They were wrong. Failing to explode after a direct hit was just one of the major issues, circling back on the submarine was another.
P.S. The USS L. Mendel Rivers (SSN-686) was decommissioned over 25 years ago. Unlike the USS Hyman G. Rickover I think it is exceedingly unlikely there will be a repeat.
The Royal Navy in WWII had an entire class of corvettes used in anti-sub warfare on convoy duty that were named after flowers. Sunflower, Snowflake, Gladiolus, Marigold, Hyacinth and Loosestrife, among others were credited with sinking German or Italian subs.
