It’s taking a little time, but I think I have the flow for the photo-editing.

So far, I’m working through all the pictures of MEGEN Pinch took on his Norfolk, VA area tour. You can see them here.

Suggestion: Download them, print them out on a full sized piece of paper, then “pose” your favorites around for others to see, and also for photos of your own “Virtual MEGEN.” If you take some, contact me for the FTP site to send them to me.

I’ll keep at at and will get on AW1 Tim to ftp me his shots from Bath/Brunswick, ME.

Marines coming ashore at Agat Beach on Guam July 21st, 1944: A joint operation landed both Army and Marines on two different beach heads, one to the north of Orote Point at Asan, the other to the south at Agat, both on the west coast of the island. The landing forces cut straight across the island to divide the Japanese, then headed north and south to complete the liberation. From the 60th Anniversary Celebration website, a little background:

[..]
The first European ship to arrive here was under the command of Ferdinand Magellan, who discovered the island of Guam and this quiet bay in 1521.

His arrival led to Spanish colonial rule, which lasted until 1898. At the end of the Spanish-American War, Guam – along with Puerto Rico and the Philippines – became an American territory.

During the Spanish period, a small village emerged along the bay, and today Umatac remains a serene community accented by the spire of the local church honoring San Dionisio. Nearby is the Magellan Memorial, commemorating the discovery that changed the course of Guam’s history.

The island’s first inhabitants were the Chamorros, expert navigators and adventurous seafarers who had left Southeast Asia and crossed the sea in open canoes. No one is certain exactly when the Chamorros arrived on Guam, but scientists estimate their first landfall to have been about 5,000 years ago.

From Magellan’s arrival until today, Guam’s location in the Western Pacific has made it strategically important. Part of the Marianas group, it lies 3,800 miles west of Hawaii and 1,500 miles south of Japan. From north to south, the island measures about 32 miles in length four to eight miles in width.

Guam’s strategic importance was dramatized on December 10, 1941 – just after Pearl Harbor – when Japanese forces overpowered the U.S. garrison and took control of the island.

It remained under Japanese occupation until July 21, 1944, when U.S. Marines and Army troops, supported by Navy and Coast Guard vessels, carrier-based aircraft and special units such as the Navy Seabees, began the battle to liberate the island.
[…]
When organized resistance was declared at an end by U.S. military commanders on August 10, the operation had resulted in nearly 7,400 U.S. casualties, of which almost 1,800 were killed.

Runways were built as soon as the island was liberated, and almost immediately long-range B-29 bombers were taking the war directly to the Japanese homeland.
[…]

Some extra details come from the 50th Anniversary website:

The Liberation
The American air raid on February 23, 1944, signaled the return of the Americans on Guam.1 [a number at end of sentence refers to the endnotes] This sign was what the Guamanians had been waiting for. The Japanese Americans, but the Japanese insisted to the Guamanians that the Americans would not come back. The Japanese also told the Guamanians that the Japanese were actually winning the war. July 21, 1944 marks the day the liberation forces landed on Asan and Agat beaches to free Guam from the more than two years of Japanese occupation. Three hundred planes dropped 124 tons of bombs over the 14-mile coastline from Agana to Bangi Point. 2 The island was burning from one end to the other, and the flames were non-stop. The invasion of Guam was the most symbolic step yet taken in the Central Pacific campaign up to this date; it was also the largest land they had yet set out to conquer. 3 Guam’s recapture was significant because it would return an important possession to American hands and provide a forward supply base for future operations in the Pacific.4 The Americans also felt a moral obligation because of their earlier hold on Guam and the Guamanian loyalty towards them.
[…]

Of note on the 50th Anniversary website is a discussion of the half century plus disagreement over the control of Guamanian land. It has been an important issue all these years, and I’m sure hasn’t been completely resolved.

Four men won the Congressional Medal of Honor in this operation:

• Pfc LEONARD MASON, USMCR
• Pfc FRANK PETER WITEK, USMC
• Pfc LUTHER SKAGGS, JR., USMCR
• Captain LOUIS HUGH WILSON, JR., USMC

The “Liberation – Guam Remembers” website has some very compact, yet interesting items, discussing the occupation life, and the liberation/post-liberation people and situations on Guam. One of the historical “nuggets” of information I just gleaned was that Guam was the site of the War Crimes trials.

One of the long standing stories of surviving behind enemy lines is that of RM1 George Tweed, USN, who escaped the Japanese wand was safeguarded, with much danger to, the Guamanian people, who heroically sheltered him until he was rescued by the USS McCall on July 10th, 1944. “Robinson Crusoe, U.S.N.” is George’s autobiographical report of his time avoiding captivity.

I spent 3 1/2 years on Guam. I have dived off the beaches, found left over artifacts of the battles, including some live ordnance (the largest being an 8″ projectile laying in the jungle laying on a slope on the perimeter of the Orote Point airfield while on a Boy Scout camp out), and hiked the interior of the island. The island has become an even more prominent base in our strategic siting of military power since the closing of the US Bases in the Philippines. My post from yesterday describes my conflicted view of this day in history as a result.

Guam – Where America’s day begins, was witnessing a new beginning this day in 1944.

Yep, it was a historic day, the pinnacle of our space program, put together with men using pencils, notepads and slide rules. They got three men all the way to the surface of the moon, with few casualties along the way.

Steeljaw Scribe’s Flight Deck Friday post (a regular attraction, in case you didn’t know – every Friday) pays tribute to this spectacular event of 1969.

To me, I was on the other side of the date line, so this all happened on 7/21/1969 for me. Oh, yeah, the Guam Daily News didn’t mention it until page 4. You see, it was the 25th Anniversary of the Liberation of Guam, so they were a little preoccupied with celebrating a special day for those who lived through the Japanese occupation.

Get over and read what SJS has to say about this day so many years ago.

Read all the way to the end of this excerpt from an editorial from across the water by Ron Liddle in the TimesOnline:

Another important blow struck in the war against terror. A rather dippy English lady called Jane Felix-Browne has married Osama Bin Laden’s son Omar and intends to live with him in Saudi Arabia. Felix-Browne, 51, who also uses the name Zaina Mohamad al-Sabah and is plainly as mad as a snake, says Omar, 26, loves his dad very much and misses him dreadfully but they “disagree about tactics”.

According to Felix-Browne, Omar hasn’t spoken to Osama since – er, when was it? – 2001. Well, we’ve all had a bit of a problem getting hold of him since then, haven’t we. Maybe he didn’t pay his phone bill in Tora Bora, who knows.

The two lovers met, incidentally, while Felix-Browne, a grandmother who has been married five times before, was having a look around the pyramids: it was love at first sight, for her. The name Bin Laden gave her no qualms at all, she said. Any more than if it had been Crippen or Gadaffi, I suppose.

This is the way forward, though. Never mind the cluster bombs and Challenger tanks, the way to defeat Al-Qaeda is to dispatch legions of barking mad Englishwomen to mate with them, thus seriously compromising the jihadist gene pool and perhaps destroying the terrorists’ resolve and even their will to live.

Wow…several points to grasp and laugh about in that bit of reporting/commentary/observation on the effect on family relations when you can’t manage to pay your utility bills.

But in case you think Ron is rather one dimensional, then there is this end to the writing:

Keith Best, the boss of the Immigration Advisory Service, reckons that immigrants are “better” citizens than those of us who were born here – which has a nicely counter-intuitive ring to it.

There’s a nasty perception at large in the country that all too many immigrants scarcely have time to complete their citizenship tests before suddenly feeling impelled to strap on the Semtex and head for a nightclub or transport hub. Many people complained about Best’s statement, pointing out that it is we second-rate citizens who pay the £13m a year it costs to run his organisation.

Best was once Tory MP for Anglesey before being sent to prison for dodgy share purchases – so perhaps he intended his comments in a purely personal sense.

At least we can relax and know we still have our ties to the mother country in the form of unbridled, rampant immigration whack jobs.

H/T: Chapomatic

Open trackbacks….who could ask for anything more?

“Sea stories?” Yep, a sailor always has a few at hand….

Yes, I was politically incorrect, before we knew it was politically incorrect….

In September, 1980, I reported to my first shore based assignment at Fleet Combat Training Center, Atlantic. After two sea tours, I was looking forward to the assignment.

As a Lieutenant, I was put on the Base’s Command Duty Officer (CDO) watchbill, with a rotation of 1 in 30, the time being measured in days, not hours. So, once a month, roughly, I’d have to go to the XO’s office in the morning with the off-going CDO and do our turnover with him. Most of the work day was still spent working, but with a pager on your belt, in case something arose.

After work, you had various duties to attend to, such as sampling the meal at the mess hall, taking a drive around the base to spot check the buildings being locked, checking in the the Quarterdeck watch in Taylor Hall and generally ensuring the calm atmosphere, and being ready to answer the emergency calls.

Considering the sea duty I had come from, as well as most of my peers there,  consisted of inport watch rotation being 1 in three days, and underway watches being port and starboard (a watch period on, then one off, then back to watch) of 4 (hours) on, 8 (hours) off, it was a holiday for us “Fleet Lieutenants.”

The watchbill consisted of all W-2s and -3s, and Ensigns to LTs. W-4s and LCDRs were exempted from the CDO Watch standing duties. Having more than 30 people in that category, after 32 more people of those ranks arrived, you would be freed from the rotation. Depending on the time you arrived, you may be on the watchbill 12 months, or maybe out to 18 months, it was all determined by the “Blind Watchmakers” at the Bureau of Personnel. For Unrestricted Line Officers like myself (those with the path to commanding a vessel or air squadron), that time frame comprised 1/2 to 3/4 of your two year shore duty assignment, normally coming after 3 years in the Fleet. We also had a number of “General Unrestricted Line” (“GURLs”) officers assigned to the base. These officers, with rare exception, were females, not being able to be sent to sea (this was before women were assigned to ships). Their tours, generally beginning at the rank of Ensign, were three year assignments. Their time on the CDO watch bill, at the worst, would span about 1/2 of their time, and no more.

I had been standing the CDO duties for just about a year, and I was due to roll off within about two months, when the command received a new Executive Officer. I don’t recall his name, but he was an aviator, and had been a POW in North Vietnam.  After he had been in the saddle about a month, he asked the Senior Watch Officer why so many fleet experienced Lieutenants came to his office for CDO turnover, when he kept running into masses of Ensigns and Lt JGs who seemingly were all over the base, but off the rotation.  The LCDR told him how the “membership” for the CDO list was set up and the XO apparently uttered some impolite words, indicating his displeasure. He then directed Rich to get out the linela number list (the precedence order of all Naval Officer) and put the 32 most junior qualified people in the rotation. It seemed the XO objected to post sea tour O-3s holding down the fort, when more junior officers were available.

Rich dutifully reworked the list and got it approved, then held a meeting of all officers in the W-2/3/O-1/-2/-3 range. I remember it pretty well. Certainly there was the aspect of “orders is orders” but not without the “happy sailors” doing what “happy” sailors do regarding a wide range of things, in this case, the fact that some people would be returned to standing watches that had “done my time.”

One junior LT, a GURL, commented loudly that “this is unfair!” I turned in my seat, and looked her in the eye and said words to the effect: “When you’ve got three years of sea duty behind you, standing 1 in 3 watch rotation, and I don’t mean days, I mean 4 hours on and 8 off, for months at a time, on the far side of the world, maybe you’ll see how spending the night on a base once every thirty days is pretty much a picnic.”

It got quiet. The meeting resumed, with direction from the Senior Watch Officer on implementation, and I don’t recall any more comments from any of the GURLs in the room before we dismissed.

I rolled off the watch bill after my next watch, not because of someone reported to the base, but because I was senior enough by lineal number to not have to do it any more. Net result: My lineal number saved me one duty day. I think that was the last time (and the first) my lineal number actually came into play in my career.

That title is something driven home by studies at the Naval War College. Between history and politics under the personal microscope, that was a powerful message, for, you never know when you’ll have to live by it (or, as you will see, answer up to your opposing behaviors regarding the topic you yourself brought up).

In skydiving, we used to know “the ‘one eye’ (camera) don’t lie.” In the age of the Internet, the old stuff you publish has a bad habit of being uncovered in a few quick keystrokes:

Note to James Webb (D-VA): Pay attention to what you said in 1995.

James Webb and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) had their dust-up last Sunday Morning. James Webb admonished his fellow senator to not put political words in the mouths of the troops (Oh, then he quoted some poll that supported us getting out saying the troops are like the population is their sentiments about the war – I most strongly find that out of place).

Anyhow, Mark Levin was doing some reading of a 1995 essay on his show last night:

About a year ago I made a presentation to a group of high-powered account executives at one of the world’s largest investment banks. My speech discussed Vietnam’s current demographics, its economic future, and the desirability of doing business there. During the question-and-answer period I was challenged by a gentlemen of about my age who had never been to Vietnam and who in his youth had obviously been opposed to the war. Why, he asked rather snidely, would I want to do business with the communists when I had tried to kill them as a Marine? Where was my consistency of thought? And indeed why did we even fight a war if they were so keen to do business with us?

I answered by pointing out that I have always believed in the strength of the culture and people of Vietnam, that the conditions now emerging in that country are approaching, however slowly, what I and others wanted to see twenty-five years ago; and that it was the communist government’s actions, not American intransigence, which had held back the country during the last two decades.

Before the next question was asked, I was interrupted by another million-dollar-a-year man, who it turned out was a Yale graduate and an Army veteran of the Vietnam War. He had become so angry from old memories that his face was on fire.
[…]

Oh, and it gets better. Here’s the entire editorial, written by a Vietnam combat vet, and he’s pretty angry at the “elites.”

Yep, you saw, if you took that jump, who wrote it.

I am left to wonder what the promised political pay off is on the table for such an opposing presentation last Sunday…

Back to the days of our “beginnings.”

Thomas TruxtunThomas Truxtun had been a privateer in the Revolutionary war, and a captain of merchantmen. He knew the sea. When we began to build our Navy, not from converted commercial vessels, but from the keel up as warships, Thomas was one of the men chosen to supervise the construction of one of the six frigates. His charge was the USS CONSTELLATION.What was significant about Captain Thomas Truxtun and USS CONSTELLATION? He was the first to engage in a fight with foreign naval vessels, in this case it was the French ship L’insurgente> on February 9th, 1799 in the West Indies. The L’insurgente was captured as a prize and Lt John Rodgers was assigned as the prize crew master. The ship eventually became a US Navy warship.

A little more history of the man Thomas Truxtun from “Six Frigates” by Ian Toll: When first sent to Baltimore to begin construction of the CONSTELLATION, Truxtun took charge and selected the area at David Stoddard’s yard, away from Fell’s Point, where the shipbuilding took place in the area. More secluded, but not so far as to prevent laborers from getting there. Truxtun disdained the southern maritime industry, making a point of letting the War Office know the ship could be built for less in Philadelphia. When he found out David Stoddard, the assigned Ship Constructor didn’t like the Joshua Humphery’s design, and intended to alter the plans, Thomas Truxtun confronted Stoddard and ended that idea.

Further of note in this effort to built the CONSTELLATION, as funding got tight, and the authorization of 1794 to build the six frigates was amended in 1796, CONSTELLATION was one of the three vessels which would continue to be worked on and put to sea, along with UNITED STATES and CONSTITUTION, which, most likely is a credit to Thomas Truxtun’s efforts: “Work on the 36 gun Baltimore frigate progressed under the autocratic supervision of Captain Thomas Truxtun” says Ian Toll of those days.

Not only did Captain Truxtun put his energy into building the ship, he also, through self study of available British books, charts and tables, taught himself the “difficult art of ‘lunars’ – a process requiring precise celestial observations and arduous logarithmic calculations.” As resultant output was a book, “Remarks, Instructions and Examples of Latitude and Longitude,” which was sent to the War Office with a suggestion his peers read it.Maybe the much lamented modern day concepts of using a “business model” to run the Navy had it’s roots with Thomas Truxtun. He said to McHenry “If we are to have a navy, we must make officers manage that navy.” His philosophy was that running the navy was not like running merchant ships. The life of a naval officer was continuous work, attention to detail devotion to excellence in every aspect of duty and deportment. Midshipmen, not ensign, was the first step towards learning the “trade.”

There is more history of the man who not only had our first combat action in blue water, but the one who certainly, by his practice, set the course for some of the very practices that we value as tradition in “Six Frigates.”

One of the more interesting sections in the tale of Captain Truxtun’s service was the great controversy in determining the value of the prize ship, L’insurgente. It sounds like there were some efforts to appraised her, via some influence, at a greater value than she was worth, backed by Captain Truxtun and some of his officers. Why? Each of the crew members received a portion of the value of the vessel as a reward for the captured. In the end,, after many investigations, it was determined no disciplinary action was to be taken and a lesser value assigned to the prize.

But, to put a little interesting humanity to this story of Captain Truxtun, after the success over the French, he began politicking to move, in seniority, from the position of 6 of 6 to a higher “lineal number,” , certainly above those positions of Captains’ Dale and Talbot, who’s ships were halted in construction is 1796 and they were released from their commissions for a time. As a result of the unsuccessful maneuvering, Captain Truxtun resigned his commission in 1799 and later refused a commission for the Barbary Wars.

Ships named for Thomas Truxtun (from WikiPedia):

• The first Truxtun was a brig launched in 1842 and destroyed after running aground off Mexico in 1846.
• The second Truxtun (DD-14) was a destroyer in service from 1902 to 1919.
• The third Truxtun (DD-229) was a destroyer in service commissioned in 1921 and accidentally wrecked in 1942.
• The fourth Truxtun (APD-98) was laid down as a destroyer escort DE-282 in 1943, but completed as a high-speed transport in 1945, later transferred to Taiwan and renamed Fu Shan.
• The fifth Truxtun (CGN-35), originally DLGN-35, was a guided missile cruiser.
• The sixth Truxtun (DDG-103) is an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer that has recently been launched.

The TRUXTUN (DDG-103) is scheduled for commissioning sometime in 2008. She is being built in Pascagoula., MS, and the construction has been delayed by Hurricane Katrina.

USS TRUXTUN (DDG-35), a nuclear powered vessel, now decommissioned, had a long and eventful life in the Pacific Fleet, serving in Vietnam on many deployments, and was one of the first ships to head to try to provide support for the USS PUEBLO (AGER-2).

In 1986, as part of the USS ENTERPRISE Battle Group, she sailed the Suez Canal to assist in Operations in the Vicinity off Libya, chronicled from my view point in this series.

Later, she sailed on support of Operation EARNEST WILL, escorting tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, and was part of DESERT SHIELD/DESERT STORM in 1990/91.

At the USS IOWA Turret Nr 2 Gun Crew Memorial in Norfolk, VAIt seems “Pinch” Paisley was on a road trip and took some time to get pictures and publicity for the ValOUR-IT project the week of the 4th of July, while doing some active duty time…Stay turned for more outstanding naval settings where MEGEN has been showing up at!

Update 07/16/2007: Pinch has posted an entire set of great photos of MEGEN, in the company with ships a and planes and at memorials. Not only are they fun to look at, but they are great to copy and send around to your friends, complete with an explanation of the ValOUR-IT program!

It sounds like a cute commercial, but it was real….on Rush on Monday of this week. The last three sentences are a keeper as a set:

Story #6: Wrecking Ball Snaps Loose, Wreaks Havoc

RUSH: By the way, imagine this. You’re walking along, minding your own business — you’re in Meadville, Pennsylvania — and all of a sudden, no, it’s not an airplane crashing into your sidewalk. A wrecking ball is rolling down the sidewalk in the street right at you! A 1500-pound, three-feet wide wrecking ball broke loose of a crane cable, rolled nearly a mile downhill. Imagine you’re out walking and you just hear this thing and you turn around and say, “Whoa! What is this?” It mashed more than a dozen vehicles, and it injured three people “as it bounced from curb to curb across the street, and slammed into the back of a car stopped at an intersection. That force caused a chain reaction with two other cars at the traffic light. The driver, an Allegheny college junior, said he thought a car had hit him when his back windshield exploded. The wrecking ball finally came to lest in the trunk of a car and pushed it nearly 20 feet.”

I want to know what kind of car has a trunk big enough to handle a 1500-pound wrecking ball. Well, it’s three feet wide. Ah, it’d probably fit in a Prius. Do Priuses have trunks, or is that where the battery is? I have no clue. “Workers had been using the wrecking ball to demolish part of a library at Allegheny College when the cable snapped.” Actually, you should have seen this: a whole bunch of people were running after this wrecking ball like crazy. They weren’t trying to stop it. They were trial lawyers throwing out business cards like confetti all over the place.

I’m sure some insurance agent is contemplating a new career right about now.

While scouring the net for historical data, I found this essay by a Chief Petty Officer Fredrick Harman in August 1965:

“Is Americanism Dead?”Chief Harmon wonders then as we do now….