Charles Fenwick: Military

Admiral James Bond Stockdale, RIP

Wed, 06 Jul 2005 22:58:43 GMT

Just overheard television news reporting his death. Unfortunately, most everyone my age knows him only from the '92 vice-presidential debate and know nothing of his POW experience. Outside the Beltway has the AP story and some links...

WWII Missing in Action Soldiers Identified

Fri, 17 Jun 2005 16:29:23 GMT

The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that the remains of two Army soldiers missing in action from World War II have been identified and returned to their families for burial.

They are Sgt. John T. Puckett, Wichita, Kan., and Pvt. Earnest E. Brown, Bristol, Va. Puckett will be buried tomorrow at the Ardennes American Cemetery, Neupre, Belgium. Brown was buried last week near Bristol, Va.

On Jan. 15, 1945, during the Battle of the Bulge, Puckett and Brown were searching for German soldiers in a wooded area near Elsenborn, Belgium. They were ambushed and came under intense enemy machine gun and mortar fire. Eyewitnesses indicated they were killed, but their bodies could not be recovered due to enemy activity.

Following the war, remains of American soldiers were recovered and identified, but not those of Puckett and Brown. Then in 1992, two Belgian nationals located and excavated an abandoned fighting position in the forest east of Elsenborn. They recovered remains and other evidence and turned them over to U.S. authorities in Europe.

Scientists of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory used mitochondrial DNA as one of the forensic tools to identify the remains as those of Puckett and Brown.

Of the 88,000 Americans missing in action from all conflicts, 78,000 are from World War II.

(Department of Defense press release June 17, 2005)

Pvt Brown's younger brother is still alive and had given up hope of giving his brother a proper funeral. The story is told in the Bristol Herald Courier's story "Soldier Returns Home...60 Years Later":

BRISTOL, Tenn. – After 60 years, Private Earnest Brown returned home last weekend, wrapped in the same type of Army blanket that kept him warm through two European winters during World War II.

Every time Brown’s remains have been moved since 1992, he’s been carefully shrouded in a blanket, the folds held together with clothespins.

Until that year, the bones were undiscovered, lying in an abandoned foxhole in a Belgian forest. Brown, who grew up in Clintwood, died in 1945 during the Battle of the Bulge, the last great fight in the European Theater of World War II. He was 31.

The Army wrote him off as missing in action and unrecoverable. Over the years, his parents, wife, siblings and three children all died of natural causes until there was only one family member, younger brother Paul Brown, left.

He said he still thought about his brother, but had given up all hope of a proper funeral.

Indeed, Earnest Brown’s remains would never have been recovered if not for a remarkable confluence of coincidence and dedication.

His identification took the combined efforts of a team of Belgian diggers who knew what to do with the remains of a U.S. soldier and a group of veterans and advocates who refused to allow Brown to be remembered coldly as CIL-1992-167-I-02...

It's a remarkable story worth reading in its entirety.

Captain Slade Cutter, RIP

Wed, 15 Jun 2005 17:29:36 GMT

I saw this on Monday but neglected to post it.

Captain Slade Cutter, Naval Athlete and Submariner, Dies (Washington Post)

Slade D. Cutter, 93, the U.S. Naval Academy athletic icon who later amassed one of the great World War II combat records as a submariner, died June 9 at Ginger Cove retirement community in Annapolis. He had Parkinson's disease.

"College football players should forget the game the moment it is over," Capt. Cutter once said. Still, he will be remembered for his sporting efforts as much as the far more dangerous work he completed during the war, exploits that earned him four awards of the Navy Cross and two awards of the Silver Star. The Navy Cross is the highest award for valor after the Medal of Honor

Capt. Cutter once wanted to be a professional flutist but was pressed into athletic duty at the Severn School, the preparatory feeder school for the Naval Academy. Being tall (6-2) and husky (215 pounds), the "blonde, easy-moving chunk of brawn," as one reporter wrote, became one of the collegiate athletic world's celebrated Depression-era figures.

He won the intercollegiate heavyweight boxing championship, became an All-America tackle and, in 1967, was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.

His most acclaimed feat came Dec. 1, 1934, the day of a wet mudfest against Army at Philadelphia's Franklin Field. He said he exchanged long cleats for shorter ones -- giving him better advantage for a smooth kick -- surprising coaches who expected him to fake-kick the ball.

"When they saw it was going to be a real kick, they yelled, 'The damned fool!' " he said years later. "Then it went through, and they thought it was great."

He kicked a game-winning, 20-yard field goal before 79,000 people, giving Navy its first victory against Army in 13 years. The final score was 3-0, and Capt. Cutter was heralded as the "hero of the day."

Slade Deville Cutter was born Nov. 1, 1911, in Chicago and raised on his family's corn and alfalfa farm in Oswego, Ill.

He was steered away from sports by his father, who had been severely injured as a college athlete. Encouraged by his mother, Slade learned piano and then the flute. He won an interscholastic solo flute championship at which John Philip Sousa was a judge.

Later, in his Naval Academy yearbook, he listed the flute, along with chewing tobacco and swearing, as among his major vices.

At Severn, he was spotted by Paul Brown, later the famed coach of the Cleveland Browns, who called Capt. Cutter's father to plead permission to sign up his son. That began his athletic career, which accelerated when he entered the academy in 1931.

Despite lucrative temptations to became a professional boxer, he stayed in the Navy and attended submarine school.

Early in the war, he served as executive officer of the submarine Pompano and was mentored by then-Capt. Lewis Parks, who encouraged aggressive action by his crew. Parks also wanted his officers to calculate firing trajectories in their minds, which he felt would save time and allow quicker maneuvering and successful attacks.

Made executive officer of the submarine Sea Horse in early 1943, Capt. Cutter soon clashed with his new commander over what he viewed as the man's cautious tactics. Capt. Cutter was relieved of duty and ordered to his quarters. He wrote in a letter to his wife that the officer was letting enemy vessels go by "like trolley cars."

Back at Pearl Harbor, a vice admiral agreed with Capt. Cutter and gave him command of the Sea Horse for its second patrol. He received the Navy Cross awards while on the Sea Horse, which sunk more than 100,000 tons of Japanese vessels in enemy-controlled waters.

Although he is sometimes credited with sinking 23 ships, four were believed to be unarmed Japanese trawlers. Capt. Cutter expressed regret at having torpedoed those vessels, despite orders to shoot all enemy craft. He preferred to say he sank 19 ships, mostly troop transports and oil tankers.

Capt. Cutter once said his most worthy wartime contribution was a reconnaissance mission in the southern Philippines in June 1944 that warned of the massive and fast-moving Japanese fleet off Mindanao, preparing for a surprise attack against the Americans.

"The U.S. hadn't known where that task force was for two weeks," he told a reporter in 1997. "It was far ahead of us and we couldn't catch up, but we radioed its position, course and speed to headquarters."

After every battle or depth-charging, he was known to meet with his crew to explain what they had just been through. This openness earned him great admiration among his sailors.

Known for his great tenacity, he had a blunt personal style that often rankled superior officers and may have hindered his advancement to flag rank, said Carl LaVO, author of "Slade Cutter: Submarine Warrior" (2003).

LaVO cited Capt. Cutter's invitation to witness the 1954 launching of the Nautilus, the first nuclear-powered submarine. According to LaVO, he told the media that the Nautilus was not an offensive fighting ship but instead a vehicle meant to test nuclear propulsion -- the opposite of how the military had sold the expensive vessel to the public.

In the late 1950s, Capt. Cutter was made the Naval Academy's athletic director to encourage popular football coach Eddie Erdelatz to resign. LaVO said that Erdelatz was running a "professional-style football program" but that too few players were opting to remain in the Navy after graduation because of his reputed disparaging of the service. Capt. Cutter's knowledge of the sports program and his feeling that Erdelatz was "disloyal to the Navy" led to Erdelatz's departure. Much of the task was helped by Capt. Cutter's stature as an athletic and wartime hero.

His final active-duty assignment, in 1965, was head of the Naval Historical Display Center in Washington. He later became headmaster of a boys school in Tucson, where he moved to care for his first wife's asthma condition.

His first wife, Frances Leffler Cutter, died in 1981.

Survivors include his wife of 23 years, Ruth McCracken Buek Cutter of Annapolis; two children from the first marriage, Slade D. Cutter Jr. of Austin and Anne McCarthy of Santa Fe, N.M.; three stepchildren, Scott Buek of Delran, N.J., Harvey Buek of Conshohocken, Pa., and Pamela Sullivan of Sparks, Nev.; a sister; nine grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.

So let's see: He won an intercollegiate heavyweight boxing championship, an interscholastic flute championship, and kicked a game winning field goal against Army ; a most unusual trio of accomplishments.

And what did he accomplish after that? He was merely one of the top submarine captains of World War II. I don't have my copy of Silent Victory handy, but a glance at some records online indicate that he was the second or third ranked captain in terms of tonnage sunk, (which, I believe to be less than 100,000 however. The Post probably got that number from WWII records, not any of the re-assesments done after the war (which reduced, sometimes drastically, the amount of tonnage sunk credited to particular submarines)).

Submarine Hero - Slade Edward Cutter (Undersea Warfare) has a great write-up of his submariner career and also has a picture of him kicking the game winning field goal.

CV 66 sunk

Sun, 22 May 2005 01:07:44 GMT

(from the Virginian-Pilot)

NEWPORT NEWS — The retired aircraft carrier America is on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, sunk by the Navy in a series of explosive tests that upset some veterans.

The 84,000-ton, 1,048-foot warship that served the Navy for 32 years rests about 60 miles off the coast and more than 6,000 feet down, according to Pat Dolan, a spokeswoman for Naval Sea Systems Command.

She did not give a location, but the Navy previously said the explosions would take place off North Carolina.

Dolan said the America went down May 14, finally flooded after the series of explosions over 25 days. No announcement was made at the time.

The America launched warplanes during the Vietnam War, the 1986 conflict with Libya, the first Gulf War, and over Bosnia-Herzegovina in the mid-1990s.

The Navy said in March that the explosive tests would provide valuable data on survivability for the next generation of aircraft carriers, which are now in development.

Since its decommissioning in 1996, the America had been moored with other inactive warships at a Navy yard in Philadelphia.

Dolan did not immediately return a call Friday from The Associated Press.

No warship this size or larger had ever been sunk, and plans to sink the America caused controversy.

“Not a day goes by that I don’t think about it,” said Lee McNulty, president of the USS America Foundation, which wanted to turn the ship into a museum. “Of all the carriers, that one should have been saved, just for the name America.”

My grandfather served on the America in the late 60's and one of my Lead Petty Officers on the Spruance served on her in the 90's. Both are certainly sad to see her go.

It is my hope that the forthcoming generation of carriers (currently designated as CVN(X)) will be called the America class.

A sampling of BRAC reactions in the press

Sat, 14 May 2005 16:48:48 GMT

As one would expect, the coverage in newspapers varies wildly depending on whether the area was a 'winner' or 'loser'. Plenty of non-sensical statements of outrage from politicians, etc.

Starting from my current location: Jacksonville. Huge front page headline accompanied the story, Jacksonville big base winner. With two frigates slated to come to Mayport and five P-3 squadrons to come to NAS Jacksonville, the outcome was about as good as possible for the area. Happines abounds.

Of course, there is unhappiness in Maine: Maine takes big hit and 'Plan makes no sense'
(Portland Press-Herald)

Here are some choice quotes:

"Obviously, this is a stunning and devastating decision," said Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine. "It is a very unwarranted loss and flies in the face of reason, logic, strategic value, and it certainly is a blunder of epic proportions, nothing short of a travesty."

...

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine and a member of the Armed Services Committee, argued that the decisions didn't follow the Pentagon's own priorities. Portsmouth is the most-efficient submarine yard, Brunswick's geographic location can't be duplicated

Yes, the geographic location is unique, but does it provide any military value? It did during the cold war, but not now and not at anytime in the forseeable future. On balance, the location is a negative due to the weather. When my father was stationed there, the runway was closed six hours every night during the winter. Jacksonville has an operational availability that is very near 24/7/365.

Ralph Dean, a retired Navy captain who has served on the volunteer Brunswick Naval Air Station Task Force - a group that formed two years ago to make a case to the Pentagon that BNAS should remain open - said the base can play a vital role in maritime surveillance and in ensuring that no weapons of mass destruction are smuggled into the heavily populated cities and ports of the Northeast.

P-3s are not currently performing that role. If in the future, P-3s are expected to do so, a squadron (or more) can be returned to Brunswick. That''s the point of maintaining the facility.

Of course there is much unhappiness in Connecticut: State lawmakers vow to fight for Groton site (New Haven Register) (again, selected quotes)

"Having an operational base very close to the facility that develops and builds submarines is extremely important because operations, and the people that operate submarines, are very intimately connected with building the submarines that they have to operate in times of war," Hunter said. "From a national security standpoint, I think it’s important to keep that base open."

Gee, I guess we should build a Naval Air Station in St Louis (home to the factory that builds F/A-18s) then and not have bases in silly places like Virginia Beach and California (where they are close to the fleet).

""We have to reach out to the members of the BRAC Committee and carry our case to them," Lieberman said. "We have to show them it’s not only a blow to Connecticut, but also to the nation’s security.""

I have really grown tired of the 'national security' argument used for defending keeping a particular base open. It would have some play if we were cutting the submarines from the budget as well. But, of course, that is not the case. They will just be operating from other places (Norfolk and Kings Bay).

Pascagoula's newspaper has a surprisingly level-headed story on their potential loss: Homeport on chopping block (Mississippi Times)

PASCAGOULA -- In a move that was expected by many Jackson County officials, the Department of Defense announced Friday that it was recommending closing Naval Station Pascagoula and transferring the frigates USS John L. Hall and Stephen W. Groves to Naval Station Mayport, Fla...

While Florida was a winner in general the Pensacola area does have some potential losses as officer training may be moved to Rhode Island and the Center for Naval Education and Training may be moved to Millington. Both are moves to consolidate similar functions in one location. Cuts target 1,759 jobs (Pensacola News Journal). Predictably, Senator Nelson called the cuts 'short-sighted'.

If I can stomach it, I will provide some commentary on the national media's coverage of base closings.

What BRAC means for the Navy

Fri, 13 May 2005 17:58:30 GMT

As Outside the Beltway (and plenty of others) noted. the BRAC list came out this morning. (Detailed Recommendations here (PDF)). As expected, it it is a mixture of surprises and things that were expected. Here is a brief breakdown of what affect it has on the Navy (organized more or less by significance).

SURPRISES

- Naval Station New London, CT closed. Submarines split among Norfolk and Kings Bay, GA. Sub schools to Kings Bay, GA.

As I stated in a previous post, my father and I were expecting Kings Bay to be closed. Not New London as it is to submarines what Pensacola is to Naval Aviation. Nothing short of shocking, IMO.

- Naval Station Pascagoula, MS closed. Ships and maintenance activity to Mayport, FL.

A surprise to me, but one that makes sense. There is no need to have a base that has a just a handful of ships when you have a place like Mayport that has capacity for them. One would think that this permanently soldifies the future of NS Mayport (regardless of the fate of the USS Kennedy).

- Officer Training Command Pensacola Florida relocated to Newport, RI.

A move that makes sense in general (consolidating the various officer training programs), but one that you might have thought would have gone the other way. For example, officers going into Aviation get their flight training in Pensacola, so it made sense to have them there. (Of course, there is no longer an Aviation Officer Candidate School, it was integerated with the black shoe OCS some time ago).

NON-SURPRISES

Massive closure and consolidation of Reserve Centers.

Active Duty Integration has been quite the buzz phrase over the past two years in the Reserves. The Navy doesn't wants to greatly minimize the number of reserve centers that are not within 200 miles of a Navy base.

Naval Support Activity New Orleans closed. Naval Reserve Personnel Center New Orleans to Millington, TN. Naval Reserve Command to Norfolk.

Again, active duty integration (Millington is home to the active duty Personnel Center (formerly BUPERS)

NAS Brunswick, ME re-aligned. P-3s going to Jacksonville. Airfield to be maintained.

I discussed this one yesterday.

Naval Shipyard Portsmouth (Kittery, ME) closed. Functions dispersed to Norfolk, Pearl Harbor and Puget Sound.

Its day finally comes.

NAS Atlanta closed. Commands dispersed all over the place.

Consolidating the commands with like commands. Makes sense.

Supply School, Athens GA relocated to Newport, RI.

Consolidation.

Naval Station Ingleside TX closed. Commands to San Diego.

See Pascagoula.

NAS Corpus Cristi closed. Commands dispersed, mostly to Norfolk.

As far as the potential for howlers (from the Navy) go, I can see where some would be unhappy with the OTC going to RI. Having not served at New London, nor knowing well anyone who has, I don't know how that is going to be taken by the submariners. Both of these are minor however, to some of the outrages of the 90's (Closing boot camps in San Diego and Orlando, leaving Great Lakes, IL as the only one).

As far as howlers from the civillian side go, New London is certainly tops of the list. Maine is going to be quite unhappy with losing both Portsmouth and Brunswick. However, in Maine's case the decision is very solid. Anyhow, the military's purpose should not include propping up local economies.

Brunswick awaits news of potential Naval Air Station closing

Thu, 12 May 2005 17:17:05 GMT

BRUNSWICK — Retirees Roy Peddle and Roy Holmblad often have their quiet lives interrupted by the roar of P-3 Orions flying over their homes. Peddle says he doesn't mind that his home is near the flight path of the airplanes that have been flying in and out of the Brunswick Naval Air Station for more than 50 years. Holmblad, who lives next door, also doesn't mind the noise. He is a retired Navy flight engineer...

Jittery Brunswick holds breath (Portland Press Herald)

As I mentioned yesterday, my father (a retired Naval Flight Officer with over 5000 hours in the aforementioned P-3 Orions) and I both think Brunswick is going to be closed.

Our reasoning is fairly simple. There is no longer a need for two P-3 bases on the east coast. So one of the two bases should be closed. The choices are Brunswick (Maine) and Jacksonville (Florida).

Of the two places, (my father was stationed at both, with me tagging along as a kid, of course) Jacksonville is the friendlier place for members of the military. The community supports its local servicemen 365 days a year, every year. My experienc in Maine (from '91-'03) was that a significant amount of the people in Maine were pro-military only to the point of pro-not-getting-their-base-closed (with a smaller amount being pro base closure).

Of course, the climate in Jacksonville beats Brunswick.

As for 'strategic value' it is a draw at the moment. Before 9/11 a significant amount of P-3 activity on the east coast was centered around the Carribean (counter drug ops). P-3s have since been key players in Operations Enduring and Iraqi Freedom. Looking towards the future, it is arguable that we will always have more to worry about to our south then to our north. But at the moment our concerns are not local, so I consider the issue to be a draw.

An issue I am not weighing in this, but does also support Jacksonville is that it is more of a fleet center than Brunswick is (because of the nearby Mayport Naval Station).

With one issue being a draw and the other being advantage Jacksonville, it is reasonable to expect that if an east coast P-3 base is to be closed that it will be Brunswick.

Life-saving sailors

Thu, 12 May 2005 16:50:46 GMT

On April 29, the crew of USS Normandy was training for what to do if it ever took on a captured crew of smugglers.

That's the kind of thing the guided missile cruiser does in the Gulf of Aden, the western finger of the Arabian Sea.

"We want to deny the use of the seas to international terrorist organizations," said Capt. Stephen Hampton, the Normandy's commander.

That night, the ship instead hosted nearly 90 Somalis whose overwhelmed dhow capsized en route to Yemen. About 41 people were lost to those waters, including children, according to the boat's skipper. Both the dead and the saved changed the Norfolk-based crews of the USS Normandy, USS Firebolt and USS Typhoon forever...

'Act of sheer bravery' changes Norfolk Crew (Daily Press, Hampton Roads)

Intruder on the Truman

Wed, 11 May 2005 16:42:40 GMT

British and U.S. authorities are investigating how an intruder from West Africa managed to sneak aboard the Norfolk-based aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman in England last month.

A man was discovered on the carrier on April 9 during a port visit to Portsmouth, England, according to Lt. Mike Kafka, 2nd Fleet spokesman in Norfolk. A search of the ship and the surrounding area turned up nothing suspicious. The visitor was unwelcome nevertheless.

"The Ministry of Defense was contacted and asked to remove the individual from the ship," Kafka said.

The man had made his way onto the Royal Navy's Portsmouth Naval Base and onto a boat ferrying sailors back to the Truman from shore leave.

"They were anchored off so they were using the liberty boats to get back and forth," Kafka said.

The man was initially held under a British anti-terrorist act after spending as long as two hours aboard the Truman, according to media there, but was later turned over to local police...

Carrier gets unwelcome visitor (Daily Press, Hampton Roads VA)

It sounds like this happened during the evening just as sailors were coming back from liberty, which is the perfect opportunity for someone trying to sneak aboard, expecially with the large number of people attached to an aircraft carrier. It is even more understandable when you read further on that the guy has a history of getting into supposedly secure areas.

Nevertheless, it is quite an emberassment as he had managed to slip past base security and then the ship's watch, both of which are supposed to be checking IDs.

Base closure list to be released on Friday

Wed, 11 May 2005 16:05:29 GMT

State braces for release of base closure list (Fort Myers News-Press)

Camp Blanding's star may rise with base closings (Florida Times-Union)

As the articles hint, things are looking good for Florida. The state certainly isn't facing anything like 1995 when NAS Cecil Field (Jacksonville) and and Recruit Training Center (Navy boot camp) Orlando were put on the chopping block.

My father and I have a couple of predictions. One is that NAS Brunswick (Maine) will be closed with its squadrons transferred to NAS Jacksonville. The other is that NS Kings Bay (Georgia) will be closed with its subs and associated commands transferred to Norfolk.

For details on the base closing process check out the DOD's Base Realignment and Closure 2005 page.

More on the Spruance decomissioning

Thu, 17 Mar 2005 20:39:46 GMT

Today's article in the Florida Times-Union, Navy retires oldest destroyer amid speculation over carier has a neat bit of trivia and an important fact that I am ashamed to have forgotten.

The piece of trivia is that the current Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Vern Clark, was once Commanding Officer of the Spruance.

The important fact is that the Spruance was the first 'large' warship in the U.S. Navy with gas turbine propulsion. As the later Oliver Hazard Perry class frigates and Ticonderoga class cruisers would be similarly equipped, what was revolutionary at the time became dead common.

One thing that Sprucan sailors will miss when comparing their destroyers to the Arleigh Burke class ships is the relative spaciousness. While there were technical reasons, it was widely believed on our deployment that the Commodore of DESRON 24 opted to have the Spruance as his flaghip vice the (Arliegh Burke class) Roosevelt due to its larger Captain's inport cabin (which became the Commodore's living quarters). In the case of my workcenter, there is no doubt that anyone preferred our comfy space to the workcenter on the Roosevelt, which was cramped by any standard, more so when compared to our compartment.

End of the line for the Quiet Warrior

Fri, 15 Apr 2005 17:22:57 GMT

After 30 years of service, the first and finest Spruance class destroyer, DD 963, was decommissioned today.

Assigned to Destroyer Squadron 24, the USS Spruance is the lead ship of 31 Spruance-class destroyers. The ship was built by Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Miss., and was commissioned on Sept. 20, 1975.

The ship is named after Adm. Raymond A. Spruance, who had a long and distinguished naval career that culminated in his appointment as commander-in-chief, Pacific Fleet and Pacific Ocean Areas, in 1945.

(NS Mayport's USS Spruance is decomissioned - Florida Times-Union)

The Spruance, of course, was the one ship I was a part of during my active duty time. I was assigned to her from November 2001 to February 2003. During that time we made a deployment to the Mediterranean Sea where we conducted Maritime Interdictionn Operations against vessels suspected of being associated with terrorists.

Before that, she was a participant in Desert Storm when she fired two Tomahawk missiles from the eastern Mediterranean.

She was coincidentally scheduled to go underway on September 11, 2001 for COMPTUEX , which is a pre-deployment exercise. The ship got underway a few hours earlier than scheduled and was part of Operation Noble Eagle, patrolling the mid-Atlantic coast until proceeding to complete the exercise in the Carribean. During that time she spent 38 consecutive days underway
(something wholly unremarkable for a carrier, but a bit arduous for a "small boy" like a destroyer).

Her final deployment ended in December, 2004 and was to the Persian Gulf.

With her departure from the fleet, there are only two in the class remaining, the Cushing (DD 985) and the USS O'Bannon (DD 985), homported in Yokuska and Mayport, respectively. The O'Bannon is currently on deployment and scheduled to be decommissioned this Fall. The Cushing is currently in an exercise with the Republic of Korea. Both of those ships joined the fleet five years after the Spruance.

I had read in Proceedings a couple of years ago that foreign navies considered Sprucans to expensive to consider purchasing from us after we decomm them. I have since, though, read that there were navies expressing interest in them nonetheless, so they just might have a bit more underway time left ahead of them.

Nevertheless the Spruance class will live on in a couple of ways. The ex-DD 968 Arthur W. Radford is being converted into a prototype for the forthcoming DD(X) class. Also, the Ticonderoga class cruiser is essentially a Spruance class ship modified for Aegis.

LATER: Linked to the Beltway Traffic Jam

Skipper of USS Kennedy relieved

Fri, 27 Aug 2004 14:31:19 GMT

As a result with a collision with a dhow (that I mentioned in a previous post here), the Commanding Officer of the USS Kennedy has been relieved.

Obviously, it is not acceptable for a small wooden boat to be able penetrate the safe radius of the carrier. Navy Commanding Officers have responsibilty for everything, so when there is a failure of this sort, they are the ones to take the fall.

Unfortunately, the story gives no further insight on how this ocurred.

Earlier this year, the Navy Times had an article on the high number of Commanding Officers being relieved (the Navy was on pace to break a record). Add one to that list now.

The last time the Commanding Officer of the Kennedy was relieved was after she failed INSURV, which is a major inspection held once every five years. In that case there were some extenuating circumstances, but once again the accountability of a Commanding Officer is absolute, so the relieval was warranted.

Kennedy Captain relieved (Florida-Times Union)

Muster

Thu, 19 Aug 2004 01:16:09 GMT

Jeff Quinton of Backcountry Conservative is compiling a list of bloggers who served in the military

Here are my details:

Charles Fenwick United States Navy 1999-2003
United States Naval Reserves 2003-

LATER: Apologies to Jeff for the double trackback. Radio went nuts for a couple of minutes when I tried to correct a gramatical error.

First and Finest in Action!

Fri, 13 Aug 2004 15:31:01 GMT

A friend of mine (that's currently hiding from Charley) pointed out this picture taken from the first and finest Spruance class destroyer, DD-963, whose homeport is Mayport, Florida.

I served on her for a little over a year, doing a deployment in the Med. Good times.

Tracking carriers in the Persian Gulf?

Sat, 07 Aug 2004 17:25:43 GMT

Today's Washington Post has an article about some of the data carried by Babar Ahmad, the computer specialist tied with Al Qadea that the Brits recently snagged.

The first two paragraphs are disconcerting:

A computer specialist arrested this week in England possessed the classified routes of a U.S. naval battle group and is part of an al Qaeda branch linked to Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed that authorities on three continents have been working to dismantle in recent weeks, according to court documents released yesterday and U.S. officials.

<>Babar Ahmad, who possessed three-year-old documents detailing the routes and vulnerabilities of the USS Constellation, which was then operating in the Straits of Hormuz, is the cousin of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, a key figure in the recent arrests of alleged terrorist plotters, U.S. intelligence officials said.

<>I wouldn't think too much of this were it not for a recent incident in the gulf where the carrier USS Kennedy collided with and sunk a dhow (small wooden boat). Dhows are incredibly common in the Gulf and somewhat innocuous, but one was used in a suicide attack against an oil facility in Iraq that killed two sailors.
<>
The Washington Post article gives no clues as to how our battle-group was tracked and how detailed the information is. However, it is plausible that they collecting intel on a do-it-yourself basis at sea aboard dhows.

Worrisome, as one was apparently able to slip under radar and not be noticed by look-outs before the Kennedy collided with it.

Terrorism suspect had U.S. ship data (Washington Post)

Inquiry shapes up on wreck of Kennedy carrier, dhow (Florida Times-Union)

Carrier's run-in with dhow raises red flags (Virginian-Pilot)

USS Enterprise returns from Summer Pulse 04

Sat, 24 Jul 2004 20:43:23 GMT

After two months away from home, the USS Enterprise returned to Norfolk yesterday.

The article (unfairly, IMO) talks about a subdued reception and how there wasn't the usual pomp and circumstance attached with a ship returning from detachment. While two months away from home is a fair bit of time, it is nothing like six plus months. It's understandable that there weren't mobs of families waiting on the pier. It would have been more appropriate to lead with their accomplishments

The Enterprise completed three major exercises during Summer Pulse. The first joined up with a NATO training exercise known as Neo Tapon that tested allied surface warfare, air warfare and strike mission capabilities.

The second exercise, the Joint Maritime Course, was sponsored by the United Kingdom and allowed the Enterprise to work again with NATO.

The last exercise brought allied forces from Morocco, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Turkey and the United Kingdom together, totaling some 20,000 personnel and 30 ships.

Bravo Zulu and welcome home, shipmates.

The Truman returns from her short excursion for Summer Pule on Sunday. On Monday, the George Washington returns from a six month deployment.

The Ronald Reagan arrives to her home

Fri, 23 Jul 2004 19:17:54 GMT

CVN-76, the USS Ronald Reagan, pulled into her homeport of San Diego for the first time today. Thousands of spectators were at the peir to see the arrival. Nancy Reagan was there as well.

Capt. Andres "Drew" Brugal, the executive officer, said he thrilled to be hosting Mrs. Reagan aboard the ship.

"Obviously it's kind of a sad time right now, so close to the president's death. She's the sponsor of the ship and we're very happy to see her," he said.

Mrs. Reagan visited the ship's Ronald Reagan Room, a museum featuring the former president's cavalry uniform, movie posters, a video presentation and a chunk of the Berlin wall.

In a nod to Reagan's Hollywood days, the ship also has a celebrity walk of fame with such names as Alfred Hitchcock and Spencer Tracy on the mess deck.

Make your namesake proud, shipmates.

The return of the Navy jets to Hampton Roads.

Fri, 23 Jul 2004 19:04:52 GMT

With planes from NAS Oceana in Virginia Beach aboard each of the carriers in Summer Flex 04, it's been awfully quiet in the Hampton Roads area.

With the return of the George Washington and Harry Truman, the sound of freedom is about to fill the skies once again.

The jet noise issue has been a perennial one ever since NAS Cecil Field in Jacksonville was closed and most of their jets were moved to Oceana.

For almost all of my childhood I was never far away from a Navy runway. Most of the time I was regaled with the sweet sound of the turboprops of the P-3 Orion. In high school however, I was but a couple miles away from the Fentress Field mentioned in the article, which is where our F-14s practiced at. It certainly got noisy at times, but I never minded.

Back in the 80's there was a poster from one of the aviation companies that summed up the situation perfectly. It read:

GOT A PROBLEM WITH JET NOISE?

DO THE JETS LOOK LIKE THIS?

(picture of Soviet MIG-21)

NO? THEN WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?

Beijing Growing Restless Over Taiwan

Tue, 20 Jul 2004 23:01:35 GMT

An interesting article by Robert Maquand of the Christian Science Monitor. It's the Chinese that are doing unprecedented wargaming in the region, not the United States.

For the next few weeks on a spit of land called Dongshan along the Taiwan Strait, a Chinese military force will practice making offensive strikes.

The exercise, which began last week, resembles what Chinese analysts say a military strike on Taiwan would look like: commando raids and elements of a so-called "decapitation strike" on Taipei, including night bombing runs - something the People's Liberation Army (PLA) has not practiced before in a coastal exercise.

... ...

State media are at volume levels not heard since 2000, the last time Chen, who desires a separate identity for Taiwan, was elected. Newspapers show Chinese frigates shooting rockets. They list Chinese weapons that "Americans are afraid of" - including the mobile-launched long range Dongfeng-31 and Dongfeng-4 rockets. Party newspaper People's Daily issued an angry broadside Tuesday on a July 15 resolution in Congress supporting the Taiwan Relations Act. The law allows US weapons sales to Taiwan for defensive purposes so long as the island is threatened. People's Daily argued that Congress "fabricated a Chinese military threat in order to justify arms sales to Taiwan - a blatant intervention into China's internal affairs."

... ...

A new level of anxiety about Taiwan in Beijing is reportedly one reason National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice came here July 8 to signal, in her words, "what [the US] can and can't do"to cooperate with China. Analysts argue that an element of the ongoing US naval Summer Pulse '04 exercises that involve deploying seven carrier groups worldwide has protection of the Taiwan Straits as part of its message. (It is incorrect, as reported in Chinese and US media, that all seven carrier groups will gather in the West Pacific and that Taiwan is participating in the exercise.)

I am glad to see that someone in the media is doing their homework and setting the record straight with regards to Summer Pulse '04.

While it seems like we've been hearing for years that Communist Undemocratic China is preparing to attack Taiwan (thereby making it seem like a perpetual fear that is unjustified), it unfortunately looks more and more like the enemies of freedom are just biding their time, gathering strength, and waiting for the right opportunity.

Summer Pulse 04 Misinformation

Mon, 19 Jul 2004 20:55:42 GMT

A couple of weeks ago I posted about Summer Pulse 04, the exercise that has put seven aircraft carriers to sea at one time.

An article in the Straits Times reported Chinese sources as saying that the exercise is designed to put seven carriers within striking range of China.

This "news" has bounced around different forums of the internet (including that of the Kerry campaign). Most recently it was in a column published in the Los Angeles Times.

Now, I know that people in the know aren't exactly relying on the Los Angeles Times for their military news (think of their (non) coverage of Paul Bremer's departure speech), but still , I cannot let this slip by.

Quietly and with minimal coverage in the U.S. press, the Navy announced that from mid-July through August it would hold exercises dubbed Operation Summer Pulse '04 in waters off the China coast near Taiwan.

Quietly, by being on the front cover of the Navy Times, minimum coverage being articles in every newspaper in Navy towns (Norfolk, Jacksonville, San Diego, etc).

While part of the Summer Pulse '04 exercise is in the Pacific, that is nowhere near the whole thing. It is going on in all regions, Europe, South America, and the Middle East, in addition to Asia. Nowhere has the Navy said that this exercise is solely about China. Check out the official websit e yourself.

This will be the first time in U.S. naval history that seven of our 12 carrier strike groups deploy in one place at the same time. It will look like the peacetime equivalent of the Normandy landings and may well end in a disaster.

The first sentence would be true if that event were to occur. However, as I stated before the plan isn't to have all seven carriers in the same place. They are all over the world.

Operation Summer Pulse '04 was almost surely dreamed up at the Pearl Harbor headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Command and its commander, Adm. Thomas B. Fargo, and endorsed by neocons in the Pentagon. It is doubtful that Congress was consulted. This only goes to show that our foreign policy is increasingly made by the Pentagon

Actually, the idea for the Fleet Response Plan came straight from the CNO, who charged the Atlantic Fleet commander, ADM Natter to work out the details. If this were a massive build-up around China, I could see where one would want Congress to be notified. But as this is routine business (notable only because this is the first time we've tried it), I don't see anything that would warrant extra special attention.

According to Chinese reports, Taiwanese ships will join the seven carriers being assembled in this modern rerun of 19th century gunboat diplomacy. The ostensible reason given by the Navy for this exercise is to demonstrate the ability to concentrate massive forces in an emergency, but the focus on China in a U.S. election year sounds like a last hurrah of the neocons.

Yes, when I want solid information about what our military is doing, I immediately turn to the press of Undemocratic Communist China (to use the name given by Klingenfuss). Again, the reason for the exercise isn't to amass forces in one area, it's to show we can have forces in multiple regions at once. (Neocon count=2 now)

It goes on to imply that we are looking to start a war with China, with this exercise being the provocation.

To see that we aren't amassing our Carriers in one location, one only need to do a bit of research. As a Virginian-Pilot article reports, the Enterprise is playing with the Europeans, and is due back at the end of this month. The Kennedy went out to relieve the George Washington, which is now homeward bound (apparently cleared the STROG today). The Kennedy is now in the North Arabian Gulf. The Ronald Regan left Norfolk in late May to make the swing around South America to arrive in San Diego on July 23. The Truman, like the George Washington, is homeward bound after completing its deployment. The ones that are playing in the Western Pacific are the Kitty Hawk, which got underway today and will be joining the Stennis.

To see this for yourself, you can look at Status of the Navy, and the mildly disconcertingly detailed Where Are the Carriers?

Using Chinese propaganda to back up paranoid fantasies about neoconservatives is really shoddy.

But what do I know? After all

Blogging is especially amenable to introducing negative information into the news stream and for circulating rumors as fact.

(LA Times)

LATER: Submitted to Beltway Traffic Jam.

EVEN LATER: Some linking madness:
- A post entitled Don't Tread On Me with a cool picture of the Truman and Enterprise and other ships sailing together.

- A sampling of the forums I mentioned.

-Some saner coverage from Winds of Change and EastSouthWestNorth.

Ben Stein's last column for E! Online

Tue, 13 Jul 2004 05:37:59 GMT

AlphaPatriot pointed this out.

I had never read this particular column of Ben Stein before. Apparently it was about all of the Hollywood stars he would come across while dining at Morton's. While he says:

I loved writing this column so much for so long I cam to believe it would never end.

He later adds:

I no longer want to perpetuate poor values by pretending that who is eating at Morton's is a big subject.

Specifically:

We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.

The whole coumn is worth a read.

TRANSFORMATION IN ACTION

Fri, 09 Jul 2004 04:48:10 GMT

When discussing the military in the 1990's it was obligatory to mention the need to adapt to the needs of the post-Cold war era. There was much talk and little substantive action. The overall composition and deployment of forces in say, January 2000 was little different from that of say, January 1990 (although the size of the ranks was smaller).

The tenure of Donald Rumsfeld has finally brought about the needed changes. A prime example of the transformation that is taking place in our military is the Navy's Summer Pulse '04 exercise. It is a dramatic show of the Navy's surge capabilities as it consists of seven aircraft carriers underway at once.

This is impressive for two reasons. Not only can no other nation put seven carriers to sea at once, but no other nation even has seven carriers. The other reason requires a bit of explanation.

In the past, normal deployment operations consisted of having two carriers on deployment at a time, one from the east coast and one from the west coast. The length of the deployments were fixed at six months (barring a crisis) and deployments were followed by a lengthy recovery period and training cycle to prepare for the next deployment. Because of this, our capability to deploy many carriers at once painlessly was quite limited even though we had thirteen (now twelve) carriers in our possession. For example, we had six carriers underway during Iraqi Freedom, but it took quite a stretch to manage that. The Abraham Lincoln had "completed" it's deployment and was homeward bound before it was turned around and ended up having a nine month long deployment. The Theodore Roosevelt and Carl Vinson were both deployed well ahead of schedule. Only the Constellation and Harry Truman were operating in a routine manner. (The sixth carrier was the Kitty Hawk, home ported in Japan, and operates in a different manner than its stateside counterparts). The operation put quite a short term strain on the Navy and soon afterwards we were left with only one carrier underway.

The Navy realized it needed to change its ways and came up with the Fleet Response Plan which changed how carriers spend their time in between deployments. An immediate consequence of this was that deployments were no longer a fixed length, instead ships would go underway with the understanding that their deployment could be as short as three months and as long as nine months if necessary.

The leader of the battle group I was in, the USS Kennedy, is part of this exercise, as are the Norfolk based carriers Harry S Truman , Enterprise, and George Washington. The west coast based participants are the Ronald Reagan and John C Stennis. Rounding out the group is the Kitty Hawk.