Oh I’m sure. I’m just referencing a common movie trope of sailors from all periods in history blowing off steam through misadventures with prostitutes and bar fights.
NYC gets flooded with seamen every year during Fleet Week. Other than a lot of white uniforms around town, you pretty much never hear of any trouble.
I linked to that upthread.
I figured someone must have posted it, but didn’t see it. Thanks.
Officers get shore leave as well, but fraternization between officers and enlisted personnel is prohibited. There are basically four groups of personnel: junior enlisted, senior enlisted (i.e. chief petty officers), junior officers (ensign to lieutenant), and senior officers. Everyone generally hangs out on shore leave with someone from their “group” to avoid running afoul of fraternization rules.
Beyond that, people tend hang out with people from their own division or department (the equivalent of co-workers).
And there is a natural division between shipboard personnel and the carrier air wing personnel on an aircraft carrier.
We don’t need a huge navy though - most of the ships are useless in warfare. Battleships, destroyers, and littoral combat ships are money pits.
Destroyers are, combat effectiveness per ton, the best bang for the buck in any navy.
This is a big topic, but I’ll try to be brief.
First off, the U.S. has no battleships, and has not built a battleship since WWII.
Guided-missile destroyers (and cruisers) help protect aircraft carriers in a carrier battle group. They have anti-air capability and some anti-submarine capability.
Aircraft carriers are still the premier power-projection arm of the U.S. Navy.
And submarines are very effective in war, but are not good for everything. They don’t carry any projectile weapons to speak of (other than small arms) and are lousy at “showing the flag,” escorting other vessels, defending a strait, or enforcing a blockade (other than sinking a vessel). Nor can they conduct mine-clearing or maritime interdiction. Nor do they have any anti-air capability whatsoever. On the other hand, any surface ship is basically a sitting duck against a modern attack submarine. Which is why carrier battle groups also include a submarine or two for protection against enemy subs.
As for littoral combat ships, they are still working out the bugs on these. They are intended to fill a wide range of small-ship roles including maritime interdiction and mine-clearing, as well as other operations in shallow coastal waters.
Trump wants to build a battleship, which is why I brought that up.
My point is that these ships are generally a colossal waste of money to US taxpayers.
Trump is an idiot. His proposed ships aren’t battleships by any stretch of the imagination, and regardless of what you call them, they are never going to be built. Among other things, I agree that they are a colossal waste of money, in addition to being completely infeasible to build with unproven technology and no mission. I’m sure that a lot of taxpayer money will be wasted in the meantime, though.
In any event, my point was that you shouldn’t lump all those vessels in together. As @Dorjan points out, destroyers are very cost-effective warships, especially the highly capable and very successful Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers.
How do you enforce a blockade other than by sinking (or threatening to sink) a vessel that tries to get through it? I mean, the Navy could line up a bunch of ships in a show of force, and if a cargo vessel approaches they could put a ship in its path to block it. That still seems to amount to a dare, in a sense. “If your ships runs into ours it will suffer damage and potentially sink.” What enforcement is there besides the threat of being sunk?
Surface ships just make the threat visible.
JFK called it a “Quarantine” during the Cuban (Soviet) Missile Crisis, btw. Blockade has certain legal ramifications.There were Diesel Soviet subs in the area, with nuclear weapons on board, and US Navy were dropping “practice” type depth charges on them in order to persuade them to surface. Conditions onboard were not Optimal, Soviet submariners were not necessarily acclimated to tropical waters.
And that visibility makes all the difference. Plus surface ships can fire the proverbial “shot across the bow” to show they are serious.
A submarine cannot make itself visible without giving up its advantage.
Nor would it fire a $5 million torpedo (the Mark 48 ADCAP) unless it was trying to sink a ship. So if the goal is to sink a ship, a submarine is great, but if your goal is a show of force without actual hostilities, then the submarine is less than ideal.
The bottom line is that a submarine can effectively sink a vessel, but cannot effectively threaten to sink a vessel.
Those “certain legal ramifications” are that a blockade is unambiguously an act of war under international law. Which is why JFK went out of his way to never have himself or his administration use the word “blockade” when referring to what was being done, going with “quarantine”.
Contrast this with TFG’s administration using the word “blockade” to describe what it’s doing to Cuba now and had been doing to Venezuela before overthrowing its government like it’s going out of style. As I said in one of the TFG threads about Cuba questioning when we are going to war with Cuba, the answer is that we already are by virtue of declaring a blockade of the country.
I heard again just now that the crew was reduced to eating dog food. Are there many dogs aboard aircraft carriers?
Heard where?
If we’re talking this stuff, I can absolutely believe it. If we’re talking this stuff, I absolutely can not - even if it does superficially look a little more appetizing. Again, it wanders well beyond the plausible to think that 5,000 sailors worth of dog food could make it onto a ship supply chain without everyone and their cousin dropping a dime to every news outlet within striking distance. The payouts from the lawsuits would set you up for life.
Don’t cause a fuss. I’ll eat your spam. I love it!
nm … too obvious
That makes absolutely zero sense. There is in fact 1 dog aboard the Lincoln. Why on earth would any ship devote that much storage space to feed one dog on a deployment? I would suggest that whatever the source of that ridiculous rumor is was misinterpreting the sort of metaphoric language sailors use for Navy chow as a literal description. Next we’ll be hearing that they ate literal sh*t on literal shingles or literal donkey d#cks.
I heard they were eating the cats.
