Lots of distracting things today, to include the upcoming anniversary tomorrow….

But, despite my lack of focus, please feel free to post your links as trackbacks to your work.

There are two subtle things you notice in a life at sea that become so subconscious, you can’t really put your finger on what’s different, unless you think about it for a while.

The first one is the open sea, far from the shore, where the water is deep and blue, smells unlike anything you ever experience on a walk along the beach, let alone in any port facility. It’s a freshness of its own, hence “a fresh sea breeze” being a well used saying. It’s an alluring scent and one worth standing on the “weather decks” and taking deep breaths to get the full effect.

The second thing is there is always noise on the ship. At the very least, even when the ship is “cold iron” (when the ship has the main engineering plant for propulsion and electrical services shut down), the ventilation fans are running. When the ship is up and running, the hull propogates the various noises to travel througout the hull and, with time and exposure, you can detect major and unusual events at the far end of the ship. As Engineer Officer, I became very attuned to the many subtle and not so subtle indications of changes in the plant status. I recall one night, waking and realizing the watch, several decks below had started one engine and were in the process of securing the other in the forward engine room. I, of course, reached for the sound powered phone and clicked the “E-Call” buzzer to get the Enigineering Officer of the Watch (EOOW) to let me know what was up. The standard procedure was to notify me in the event of having to make equipment changes. As it turned out, it wasn’t anything major that had happened.

Two more striking times when the Ship’s noises communicated something very important was 00:32 9/18/1986. I was the Officer of the Deck and we were steaming in the South Pacific. We were running at top speed for one (of 4) engine on line when there was a *BANG* and the rapid decrease in the pitch of the turbine’s whine, as it spooled down to 0. Before the engine had had much of an opportunity to lose much speed, I had already reached for the talk switch on the 21MC box and asked the EOOW what had happened. Of course, he was up to his eyeballs in taking care of getting the initial reports in, but he said “1B is offline, starting 1A GTM.”

So, even in a ship of 563 feet and 7900 tons, the entire structure tells a story…..

The other striking time the Ship’s frame “spoke” to me will be forthcoming next Wednesday in the next schedule Ropeyarn Sunday “Sea Stories” installment.

I missed the news of the steam line on the USS FRANK CABLE (AS-40) rupturing and burning 8 sailors this past weekend, but I just received an email forwarded by Soldier’s Angels from LTC (Ret) Jim Riley:

From: Riley, James D CONT BAMC-Ft Sam Houston TX < [email protected]>
Date: Dec 5, 2006 1:36 PM
Subject:
To: Soldiers Angels

Patti

I can’t get post or even read most of the BLOGS at work. I thought you might like to update BLACKFIVE on the sailors injured in the boiler explosion. Here is what I would like to say if you’d like to send it to them

Just wanted you to know Soldiers’ Angels is on the ground in San Antonio and in an protective overwatch position & I am personally looking out for the injured sailors and their families. We will support them in any way we can as their treatment progresses. The families have arrived and are being tended by the staff and chaplains.

Thanks to Blackfive and the other MIL Bloggers, Soldiers’ Angels will be providing a new laptop for each of these six heroes as soon as they get out of the ICUs and we hope they will be blogging their story themselves very soon. Our prayers are with them and
their families.

Jim (LTC, Med Svc Corps, ret), Director, Medical Spt Ops Soldier’s Angels

Bubblehead is on the story.

For all who chipped either effort or money or both at the fund drive for Valour-IT, this is the result of your dedication to supporting our troops and, in this case, the sailors in particular.

For anyone else late to the game, Valour-IT donations are accepted year round…. (hint, hint!)

In Part III, I discussed how, if you have an understanding of organized sports, then you can use that understanding to look at the cultural, strategic and tactical issues we currently face.

As I have thought about this series more, I see something about sports we come to accept that provides more of the “governor” on our actions. This is the concept of “rules.” One of the things we do do well is translate our set of rules from the stadium to the field of actual conflict. We have a clear concept of some “authority” that contains the conflict to morally acceptable boundaries. In this same mold, we have, for a very long time in history, understood the “enemy” would be bound by the same rules. Not that sometimes there wasn’t a foul or penalty, but until the widespread introduction of guerrilla warfare in the post Korean War era, we could count on some gentlemanly (as difficult as it is to associate that adjective to this situation) acceptance and we went on with our wars.

So, here we have a governor on our actions and we are baffled when the other side completely disregards the rules. More amazingly, we have been in the state of shock since sometime in the 1960’s, and, our enemies have caught on to our befuddled state and then begin the pull tension on the cable, and we have long been hearing the ratchet click, all the while, wondering what “that clicking noise” is.

Now, toss into the mix that the referees and umpires, which we acknowledge their authority, have decided any action we take in the battle is certainly unacceptable, yet the activity of the enemy is accepted, as it is our use of force from decades gone by (disregarding much of it has been in response to aggression against us) calls for atonement now, and breaking the rules is the remedy.

In various sporting events, we have been know to wonder out loud(ly) if the refs are on the payroll of the other team. We are certainly in that situation, and not even having to wonder about one ref, the United Nations administration that accepted kickbacks in the Oil for Food scam. No wonder we can’t get a reasonable “call.”

Our feet are stuck in the sand (maybe concrete, hopefully not dry yet), awaiting the arrival of a fair umpiring staff to arrive, and it’s not looking good. While we know the calls are bad, we still stick to the rules we believe are acceptable. Not to imply we shouldn’t, it’s just that the rest of the world has thrown out the Laws of War and the Geneva Conventions, which took many millenina to make for humanity in thge first place.

But, I merely state the obvious.

This very week (how nice of them to comply with my blogging schedule), the Iraq Studies Group (ISG) will approach the President and make an attempt to open the hood and adjust the governor down below where it already is, further limiting our ability to continue in the conflict. I take issue with the composition of that body, for it appears only Chuck Robb has any combat experience, and he wasn’t a career military officer, able to gain significant hands on experience in the management of large scale battles that might help formulate a reasonable and achievable course of action. Certainly the inclusion of those with high level State Department and White House Cabinet level jobs on their resumes is good, but I’m not sure what Supreme Court Justices can bring to the table other than a legalistic set of blinders.

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BFO moment.

Why are we still looking at war strategies for Iraq? Not to say there isn’t a need for such thinking, but I think it’s better applied to the larger issue of worldwide terrorism.

As far as Iraq, we need to be face down into how the Marshall Plan and General McArthur’s methods for Germany and Japan were formulated and then put into place….

This is a teaser. I have to hit the raod, but I’ll be working on this thought much, much more!

“Work is for people who don’t know how to fish.”

I will be stress testing the aging muscles and the mental ability to efficiently place objects into vehicles to maximize the transportation assets for a friend, beginning in about an hour….so…may not be around this weekend.

Consider this a “bonus trackback” post. If you have something good, help me out! Send your good stuff along.

In the meantime, from the way back machine, here’s a link to my testimony about mail to “any sailor” and how wonderful the experience it was for many of us in the Med off the coast of Libya in 1986.

Please consider sending cards of letters to our service members around the globe. Trust me, a hand written letter, just sharing your day can do wonders for the soul.

I found this posted on Sea Witch’s blog, and since my version of WordPress has and “issue” with YouTube, just head over to her place and see how two brave West Point wanna be officers display their finest special ops intel collection skills in order to win the game this weekend….

Oh, yeah..BEAT ARMY!

Another opportunity to place your blogging in the eyeballs of my few readers…..Take a shot, who knows, you might get famous!

Sea stories….A short one. It’s about people, but it’s about signs.

Ships, quite necessarily, have bulkheads and doors and hatches for the purposes of preventing the spread of fire and flooding. Modern day warships also have a wonderful thing called “air conditioning.’ Basically, while the average reader understands “AC” as a creature comfort, yet aboard ship, that machinery is there primarily to keep the electronics cool, so the operating life is long. If you are able to gain some creature comfort as a result of being where the AC is, then it’s a bonus. Modify that with the ships built in the post-Vietnam era allowed for the crew living spaces to be air conditioned, to be nice to the crews.

Toss in that the AC you encounter in such spaces as Radio Central, the data processing center, transmitter rooms, and Combat Information Centers (CIC) is set to almost arctic condition levels, because the “twidget” maintainers believe the colder it is, the longer the equipment lives, and ergo, it’s longer between casualties, which then requires lots of work to fix the finicky items. If you read persona accounts of life on ships in the modern era, you will most likely come across accounts of sailors, while deployed to such wonderful vacation spots as the Persian Gulf and the equatorial Indian Ocean regions will add a top layer of a “Pea Coat” or a foul weather jacket on top of their dungarees to go and stand/sit their watch in Radio, SONAR, or CIC related spaces.

So, to the story. In order to “save” the cool, you need to maintain the “Air Conditioning boundaries,” where there are doors and hatches to the outside world, or the below decks engineering spaces. When ships are built, or overhauled, there are usually engraved bakelite plaques, mounted at eye level stating “Air Conditioning boundary – Keep Closed” (or words to that effect). Of course, some of the doors are on well traveled paths within the ship and in many cases, it makes sense, like loading stores, or bringing the stuff back from the SERVMART run, to hook or prop the doors open while carrying boxes, etc through the passageway.

Curious how this ends? Click here —> Read the rest of this entry »

Go forth, have fun, make many graphics!

Part II left you wondering what the answer is to the condition, where the Islamofascists are turning the crank, gleefully listening to each metallic *CLICK!* and the pawl first backs off, and then engages, one notch higher. The cable being pulled along is growing every tighter, symbolizing our emotional condition in regard to the GWoT.

I postulated before, that the carnage will grow worse. It is. It will, certainly through the installation of the newly elected Congress persons come mid January. “They” (the enemy of all that is western in nature) will continue to turn the crank to make sure we are not turning our gaze away from the humanity being sacrificed for the sake of a few who desire to stay in power…in positions so they may trade in human currency, much cheapened from anything we value it at, here in the civilized world. It is time for “them” to sprint to the finish line, which will be a few months into the Democrats control of both chambers of Congress, long enough to force a showdown (and in their mind a victory over) with the President by the Pelosi/Murtha/Rangel raging idiocy, which calls for more troops, while calling as loudly for the end.

The 21st Century is seeing but the leading edge of the Killing Fields, not witnessed since the mid-70s. Maybe we have forgotten what genocide is. Maybe “we” can turn a blind eye (no, we can’t we’re rubber-necking at the horrific nature of this equivalent of a bad car wreck on the Interstate) to what is more properly termed fratricide – the killing of your own. Mark my words. Short of the President stepping forward and emulating the vision and compassion of John F. Kennedy in the name of freedom, the death of many Iraqis is closer at hand than we care to accept.

We, particularly as an American culture, know exactly how to fathom and manage all of this. We practice it almost daily, some might say religiously, and accept it wholeheartedly for adults. For children, we have paved a road for future mediocrity in the same arena, at the hands of the Liberals and their “touchy feely” mindset.

So, what is it we know? Sports. We know it, we love it, we live it and breathe it. What is there in this analogy that can help us:

• A tough as nails coach is to be revered, for we know the outcome. The results are not today, or tomorrow, but across a lifetime;
• Strength is required. No excuses, get it or crawl to the sideline/bench in tears and get out of our way;
• Endurance is mandatory. Who likes a team who does great for the first period, and then looks like they got run over by a train for the rest of the game?
• Courage. Another ingredient, not in the same vein as in a war, but the desire to take risks when you see an opportunity;
• Refs make bad calls. Shout a few bad words and deal with it. Then, get back in the game, and re-double your efforts;
• We.Love.Winners. We don’t recall the losers, because it’s about winning;
• The “12th Man” can save your butt on a bad day. The fans, wearing your jerseys, the band, the cheer leading squad, the water boys, the managers and the groundskeepers all have a hand in your victory.
• We want to be around winners. We disregard our “personal space” to crowd our bodies together for a glimpse of them, and reach out to get their autographs;
• Entire media outlets, let alone time slots are dedicated to these pursuits. We strain to hear over “those rude people, who don’t get it” to hear the highlights of the game and the latest stats;
• We have people emulate entire league sports in a fantasy world, and use performance statistics (you know, TRUTH!) to estimate the outcome of the teams played in a virtual sense;

Need I say more? From this list, a thinking person could work through it and see where we are not doing that in this war, which, unlike sports, does have an effect on our ability to be able to put this amount of energy into the past-time of sports for a major portion of the population.

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