Category Archives: US Navy

The Enterprise is Dead….Long live the Enterprise

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Ray Mabus, a fellow Mississippian of mine, inactivated the USS Enterprise CVN-65 after 51 years of service today.

She will be hacked apart, her reactors recycled, and her steel turned into scrap iron.

However…a new USS Enterprise (CVN-80) will join the fleet in 2025 according to Mabus

 

enterprise decomissioned inactive

The video:

http://www.navy.mil/viewVideo.asp?id=17852

 

More:

NORFOLK (NNS) — Nearly 12,000 past and current crewmembers, family and friends attended the inactivation of aircraft carrier USS Enterprise (CVN 65) Dec. 1, 2012, at Naval Station Norfolk, Va.

Enterprise, the world’s first nuclear powered aircraft carrier, recently completed its 25th and final deployment and returned to its homeport of Naval Station Norfolk for a scheduled inactivation, held prior to the ship’s terminal offload program and subsequent decommissioning.

The inactivation ceremony was the last official public event for the ship, and served as a celebration of life for the ship and the more than 100,000 Sailors who served aboard.

The Chief of Naval Operations, the Commander of United States Fleet Forces, nine of twenty-three prior commanding officers, many decorated war heroes, and thousands of Enterprise veterans attended the event.

“Enterprise is a special ship and crew, and it was special long before I got here” said Captain William C. Hamilton, Jr., the twenty-third and final commanding officer, during the ceremony.

“Before I took command of this ship, I learned the definition of ‘enterprise’, which is ‘an especially daring and courageous undertaking driven by a bold and adventurous spirit.’ Fifty-one years ago, this ship was every bit of that definition.”

“Here we are 51 years later,” he continued, “celebrating the astonishing successes and accomplishments of this engineering marvel that has roamed the seas for more than half the history of Naval Aviation. Daring, courageous, bold, and adventurous indeed.”

In honor of that spirit, Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus, in a video message played at the ceremony, announced that the name Enterprise will live on as the officially passed the name to CVN-80, the third Ford class carrier and the ninth ship in the U.S. Navy to bear the name.

Commissioned on November 25, 1961, the eighth ship to bear the illustrious name Enterprise, the “Big E” was the world’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.

A veteran of 25 deployments to the Mediterranean Sea, Pacific Ocean, and the Middle East, Enterprise has served in nearly every major conflict to take place during her history. From the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 to six deployments in support of the Vietnam conflict through the Cold War and the Gulf Wars, Enterprise was there. On September 11, 2001, Enterprise aborted her transit home from a long deployment after the terrorist attacks, and steamed overnight to the North Arabian Sea. Big ‘E’ once again took her place in history when she launched the first strikes in direct support of Operation Enduring Freedom.

More than 100,000 Sailors and Marines have served aboard Enterprise during its lifetime, which has included every major conflict since the Cuban Missile Crisis. It has been home ported in both Alameda, Calif., and Norfolk, Va., and has conducted operations in every region of the world.

For more information on USS Enterprise, her legendary history, and Inactivation Week, please visit Welcome to Navy Forces Online Public Sites.

For news from Enterprise’s final deployment, pictures of the Inactivation Ceremony, and video footage of the event, log onto Command Home Page.

Visit the ship’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/USS.Enterprise.CVN.65.

The Department of Everything!

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Senator Coburn of Oklahoma has put out a 74-page PDF entitled ” Department of Everything:
Department of Defense Spending That Has Little to Do With National Security”
Contents includes:

  • Duplication and Lack of Coordination Means Taxpayers Can Pay Twice or Three Times for
  • the Exact Same Research
  • Bomb Detector Developed by the Family Business of the Agency Director Less Effective than
  • “a Coin Flip” in Spotting Homemade Explosives
  • To Boldly Go Where No Man Has Gone Before
  • ‘Koo’ Use of Slang in Twitter Messages Reveals ‘Suttin’
  • Is It Time for a Coffee Break? There’s an App for That!
  • Pentagon Researchers Study Fish to Determine if Ignorance Can Save Democracy
  • Pentagon Raids Weapons Program to Develop Beef Jerky Roll-ups
  • Perception of Size Matters: Guys with Guns Appear Bigger, Stronger and More Masculine .
  • Close Encounters and Space Weather
  • DOD Hunts Ten Red Balloons
  • Robots as Childrens’ Playmates
  • First Bird Likely Had Black Feathers, Air Force Research Concludes
  • The Science of Storytelling
  • Washington Lobbyists and Politicians Use Defense Budget as a Trojan Horse for Political
  • Pork
  • Congressionally Directed DOD Medical Research Duplicates the Mission of Other Federal
  • Agencies and May Result in Inefficient and Unnecessary Spending
  • Dramatic Increases In Federal Medical Research Spending Makes Congressional Directed
  • Medical Research Programs at the Pentagon Unnecessary
  • Case Study – Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren Virginia

The full PDF is  here

I’m With Stumpy

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Bravo Zulu, HM3 Ramos….you are a total bad ass.


U.S. Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Redmond Ramos, a corpsman, displays a tattoo that reads “I’m with Stumpy” showing his sense of humor Nov. 14, 2012, during the first Wounded Warrior Pacific Trials at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Honolulu, Hawaii. Ramos deployed with 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, to Sangin, Afghanistan in 2011 where he stepped on an IED, resulting in the loss of his leg. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Michael R. Holzworth)

Chinese in the Naval Air Business now

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These photos were released today by the Chinese military of the first “Official” landings and take offs from the 53,000-ton PLAN ship Liaoning CV-16.

The pilot who achieved the first landing was allegedly Dai Mingmeng.

Originally laid down as the Admiral Kuznetsov class multirole aircraft carrier Riga for the Soviet Navy, she was launched on December 4, 1988 and renamed Varyag in 1990. The ship was purchased in 1998 by the People’s Republic of China (reportedly for use as an amusement park) and towed to Dalian Shipyard in north eastern China. After extensive refit and sea trials, the ship was commissioned into the PLAN as Liaoning on September 25, 2012. Now with her hull 27 years old, she has landed her first carrier-capable fighter aircraft. The crew looks very professional and very…..NATO…down to the color coded float-coats.

The plane with the groovy camo is a Shenyang J-15 ( also known as Flying Shark) which is thought based on a reversed engineered Ukrainian supplied and Russian-designed Sukhoi Su-33 and is fitted with domestically produced radars and weapons. Its a Gen 4.5 fighter and allegedly has a 10% superior thrust to weight ratio and a 25% lower wing loading than the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet– the plane it would most likely fly against. The PLANAF only has 16 of these planes so far in one experimental squadron on a patchwork carrier, while the USN has about 500 F-18E/F’s in 33 squadrons ready to fly from 10 experienced nuclear aircraft carriers.

….for now….

Today is a special Day

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Know a vet? shake his hand and thank him. Related to a vet, give them a hug  today. Veteran in crisis? Dial

1.877.424.3838 for 24/7 assistance. Support the National Coalition for Homeless Vets at

http://www.nchv.org/

Think about this…   SSGT David Bellavia went into a house with six insurgents in Falluja on his 29th birthday (which incidentally is Nov 10th).

Then things got real…..

Russian Sierra off Georgia Coast?

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The Free Beacon reports (so take with a metric ton of salt) that a Russian Sierra II
 (Project 945.A – Кондор/Kondor) class SSN (nuclear attack sub) was spotted 200-miles off of Kings Bay, GA recently. Kings Bay by the way is where the USN keeps a large part of its boomer fleet (SSBNs)

The Sierra is a 9100-ton beast that is outfitted with eight torpedo tubes that can carry (besides torpedoes) a number of SS-N-21 SLCMs with 200 kt nuclear warheads, as well as SS-N-16 anti-submarine SUBROC type missiles with a 200 kt 200 kt nuclear depth charge.

Thats always comforting to have right off the US Coast. Bring on Cold War II.

Anybody seen one of these hanging around Georgia?

Warship Wednesday October 31st (Happy Halloween Edition)

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Here at LSOZI, we are going to take out every Wednesday for a look at the old steampunk/dieselpunk navies of the 1866-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week.

– Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday,  October 31

Here we see the Japanese ironclad Kōtetsu in Japan in the 1870s. She had a very interesting history and often masqueraded under several flags and names (hence the Halloween edition!).

Built in secret for the Confederate Navy to be used as the ironclad Stonewall (but dubbed the Sphinx) by  the L’Arman Yard, Bordeaux, France 1863-64, she was ‘officially’ for the Egyptian Navy (hence the original name). Her and her sister-ship were  built to break the Union blockade of the South. The sale was found out and blocked, forcing the Sphinx/Stonewall to be sold to Denmark and a Danish Navy crew took her over in the fall of 1864.

Her sister ship Cheops was sold to the Prussian Navy, becoming the SMS Prinz Adalbert.

Well, to further complicate things, the Sphinx/Stonewall/Copenhagen was turned over to the Confederate Navy, its original owner in January 1865 after Denmark lost a short war with Prussia. The ship took to sea in an epic voyage across the Atlantic shadowed by US Navy ships the whole way. She arrived in Havana Cuba  just as the war ended and the captain promptly sold her to Spain (Cuba was a Spanish territory then). Spain, turned around and sold her, unused by the Spanish navy, to the United States in July 1865 for $16,000. The US Navy sailed to to the east coast, kept her in storage for three years, often inspecting her to see how the French built ironclads.

In 1868 she was sold for $30k (almost twice what the navy paid for her) to the shogun of Japan. Delivered the next year to the Meji government (who deposed the shoguns– talk about a cursed and unlucky ship!) and named the Kōtetsu, she immediately put her ultra-modern Gatling guns and rifled cannon in action at the Battle of Miyako Bay (where she was helmed by, wait for it, French naval experts). The Japanese ultimately renamed her Azuma, kept her on the payroll for twenty years (although her internal wooden construction was rotten) and she was finally decommissioned and scrapped in 1888.

So to recap, she was built in France for Egypt with English guns (but secretly for the CSA), sold to Denmark, resold to the CSA, who sold her to Spain, who sold her to the USA, who sold her to the shogun but gave her to the Meji government to use against the shogun (under French mercenaries).

Wow, I need a drink now. Everyone, raise your Halloween punch to the Sphinx/CSS Stonewall/Copenhagen/CSS Stonewall/USS Stonewall/Kōtetsu,/IJNS Azuma!

Her specs:


Class & type:     Ironclad Ram Warship
Displacement:     1,358 t
Length:     193.5 ft (59.0 m) oa
Beam:     31.5 ft (9.6 m)
Draught:     14 ft 3 in (4.34 m)
Propulsion:     1,200 hp (890 kW) double reciprocating engine, 95 tons coal.
Speed:     10.5 kn (19.4 km/h)
Complement:     135
Armament:     1 × 300 pdr (136 kg) Armstrong
2 × 70 pdr (32 kg) Armstrong
2 x Gatling guns
Armor:     main belt, 89 to 124 mm (3.5 to 4.9 in)
turrets, 124 mm (4.9 in)

Her propulsion system was provided by Mazeline, based in Le Havre. The ship was powered by a pair of 2-cylinder single expansion engines, each of which drove a four-bladed screw that was 3.6 m (11 ft 10 in) in diameter. The engines were placed in a single engine room. Two trunk boilers, also in a single boiler room, supplied steam to the engines at 1.5 standard atmospheres (150 kPa). Two rudders were fitted side by side to control the vessel. The ship was initially fitted with a 740 square meter (2,428 sq ft) brig rig, though this was subsequently replaced with a 677 square meter topsail schooner rig.

Warship Wednesday, October 24

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Here at LSOZI, we are going to take out every Wednesday for a look at the old steampunk navies of the 1866-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week.

– Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday,  October 24

Here we see a mock up of the 1912 type US Navy battle cruiser CC-1 as mocked up by Robert Pawling.  In 1911, battlecruisers were the rage in the modern navies of the world. Great Britain had the Invincible class and was designing the HMS Hood. Japan was looking at the Kongo class. The Kaiser of Imperial Germany had the Moltke-class and looking to build the Derrflinger class.

With all of the peer pressure, the United States decided they needed a half-dozen of  their own. Original designs included ships with as many as 24 boilers to keep them fast enough (35-knots) to outrun battleships, and a heavy armament up to 10 14-inch guns to destroy anything too fast to outrun. By 1916 it had been decided to fit these monsters with powerful diesel-electric power-plants that created an amazing 130,000 kW of power. This is impressive when you consider today that the 1000+ foot USS Nimitz class super carriers of today only generate 64,000 kW of power and have to use two nuclear reactors to accomplish that feat. Eight 16-inch/50cal guns, just one fewer than those carried by the Iowa class battleships, was the final armament chosen. They would have been the most impressive six warships of their era.

World War One ended before the battle-cruisers were laid down and only two hulls, Lexington and Saratoga, were finally started in 1921. While under construction the two were a victim of the 1922 Naval Treaty. Battle cruisers were limited but aircraft carriers were allowed. This led the two huge batttlecruisers to be redesigned as large carriers. At over 800-feet long, they were only surpassed in size by the 1945-era Midway supercarriers more than two decades later. They also carried some of the largest guns of any aircraft carrier: eight 203mm (8-inch) naval rifles…making the pair every bit as powerful as a heavy cruiser. In many ways they were ahead of their time.

Saratoga after her 1944 refit, wearing camouflage measure 32 design 11A. Her 8 8-inch guns had been replaced by 16 5-inch guns and 60 40mm Bofors and– giving her the same equivalent AAA firepower of almost five destroyers.

The Lexington and Saratoga were commissioned in 1927 and for most of the pre-WWII era were the primary training and development carriers of the US fleet (the Yorktown class didn’t appear until 1937). During WWII the Lexington was lost in the Battle of the Coral Sea. The Sara won seven battle-stars, had a lifetime total of 98,549 aircraft landings in 17 years and was finally sunk in 1946 as a target for the Atom bomb tests at Bikini Atoll, where she is a popular dive destination.

Specs (as 1922 aircraft carrier)
Displacement:     36,000 long tons (37,000 t) (standard)
47,700 long tons (48,500 t) (deep load)
Length:     888 ft (270.7 m)
Beam:     107 ft 6 in (32.8 m)
Draft:     32 ft 6 in (9.9 m) (deep load)
Installed power:     180,000 shp (130,000 kW)
Propulsion:     4 shafts, 4 sets turbo-electric drive
16 water-tube boilers
Speed:     33.25 knots (61.58 km/h; 38.26 mph) (made 34 on trials, not broken by another US carrier till 1955)
Range:     10,000 nmi (19,000 km; 12,000 mi) at 10 kn (19 km/h; 12 mph)
Complement:     2,791 (including aviation personnel) in 1942
Armament:     4 × 2 – 8-inch guns
12 × 1 – 5-inch anti-aircraft guns
Armor:     Belt: 5–7 in (127–178 mm)
Deck: .75–2 in (19–51 mm)
Gun turrets: .75 in (19 mm)
Bulkheads: 5–7 in (127–178 mm)
Aircraft carried:     78+
Aviation facilities:     1 Aircraft catapult

New French Littoral Mini-sub

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DCNS, the French naval engineering firm, has come up with a spooky little midget sub. Dubbed the SMX-26 it is a short (40 meters/131-feet long)  and squat (16 meters/52-feet wide) submarine is meant to operate in very shallow water. Less than twenty feet high, it can submerge in just over twice that. Capable of operating on the seabed it has employable wheels to creep around the littoral and harbor floor, or just sit and wait for targets to hit with its 8 short ASW or two full sized torpedoes. Alternatively it can carry mine-toting frogmen or raiders.

Up for sale…..

Warship Wednesday, October 18

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Here at LSOZI, we are going to take out every Wednesday for a look at the old navies of the 1866-1948 time period and will profile a different ship each week.

– Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday,  October 18

Here we see the WWII Minesweeper USS Inaugural (AM-242/MSF-242) during the closing days of WWII. A 184-foot ship midway between the size of a PT-boat and a destroyer, her job was to clear mines but they were usually pressed into work as gunboats, inshore gunfire support, escorts, supply boats and any number of misc jobs around the fleet and anchorage.

Built in less than six months in 1944, the Inaugural joined the Pacific Fleet in time for the bloody push for Okinawa where she cleared eighty-two mines and was awarded two battle stars for service during World War II. In 1947, she was transferred  to the Atlantic Fleet Reserve mothballs where she waited quietly to be recalled to service for twenty years. She was stricken 1 March 1967 and sold the next year for $1 to become a museum ship in St Louis, Missouri, docked under the famous St Louis Arch. She continued to serve in that capacity for 25 years.

In 1993 the Inagural broke lose from her moorings in the great flood of the Mississippi River and crashed into the Poplar street bridge. Eventually the ship sank South of the MacArther Bridge. About 700 ships that have been recorded as shipwrecked on the stretch of the Missisppi  between Cairo and Hannibal in the past century so she has plenty of company.

Over the past couple decades apparently her 5-ton 40mm Bofors L60 AAA gun has been stolen and restolen no less than three times.  And her forward 3″/50 has vanished.

After 19 years the old minesweeper just recently and literally popped back up and her exposed wreckage has been local news in St Louis.

Specs;
Displacement:     530 tons
Length:     184 ft 6 in (56.24 m)
Beam:     33 ft (10 m)
Draft:     9 ft 9 in (2.97 m)
Speed:     15 knots (27.8 km/h)
Complement:     104
Armament:     1 × 3″/50 caliber gun
6 × Oerlikon 20 mm cannon
4 × Bofors 40 mm guns (2×2)
2 × Depth charge projectors (K-guns)
2 × Depth charge tracks

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