Posted on 12/23/2019 8:54:41 AM PST by Oatka
I really find it hard to believe that a ‘kid’ with 4 months in the Navy was at the helm of a Destroyer in ‘heavy waters’ with the Skipper knowing of the steering problems.
I would think the CO would have had enough sense to have his Senior Helmsman in place.
Or at least the XO or OOD noticing the situation.
Story appears ‘full of holes’ to me and I basically read it to the end and it ends up with the kid getting ‘bounced’ after 1 1/2 years because of alcholism(??)(He mentions spending 500 per week on booze and falling asleep on watch).
As to his ‘discharge’ they say he was demoted to the lowest rate but I would find it hard to believe he was much higher than SA or SN - IF he was suffering from nightmares, lack of sleep etc etc.
One might ‘accept’ the steering a Battleship from the 17/18 yo right out of Boot Camp, BUT he is quoted as saying that at 23. (further down it said he went into USN directly out of HS) in 2017 so unless he graduated at 20, the story has more holes than I thought.
It may be a ‘picky’ point on my part BUT if they can’t get the ‘easy’ part right, how can you trust the ‘hard’ stuff???
True, the effective range of a MK 7 16 inch gun is about 23 miles. the Effective range of a conventional tomahawk missile is 1,500 miles with a 1000# warhead.
He was president of his Freshman class three years in a row.
Nothing wrong with GOOD electronics. Seems these elections weren’t worked out before the ship went to sea. Bad move. And a mechanical emergency system for faulty electronics should have been mandatory before settling sail. (Could be minimal. Like emergency throttle and some emergency steering)
I know. Last year, as an Uber driver, I gave a ride in the night from my hometown, Lexington, to Pikeville, a town 138 miles away in the mountains. Most of the 606 area code is a dead zone for my phone, so as soon as I dropped my ride off, all the apps on my phone failed, including the GPS. To come back on those little country roads, I navigated the old fashioned way, with a paper map. A lot of the folks I tell that story to will say they couldn’t have found their way home, if they had been in my situation.
I thought the same thing. Definitely not the Missouri we’re talking about here
“There was actually a lot of functions on there that I had no clue what on earth they did,” Bordeaux said of the system.”
I guarantee you more time and money has been spent deciding if the US military should pay for gender re-assignment surgery than was spent training this sailor to steer.
.……….absolutely correct! I’ve said this before so I will be brief this time. I’ve stood on the bridge of the USS Haynesworth (circa 1967) when she was underway in congested waters. Sometimes I was manning the radar and sometimes I was a LOOKOUT. EVERYBODY that was on that bridge breathing was LOOKING OUTWARD and NOBODY was screwing around, no horseplay, no jokes, NOTHING but absolute concentration and quiet. If that SAME situation had been prevalent on the night in question Technology would not have mattered!
True, but not many people his age can say, “Hey, I just drove a giant-ass 8300-ton destroyer into an oil tanker.”
Don’t forget during gulf war 1 the battleships still in service were retrofitted with cruise missiles and phalanx systems.
and a question to be answered: can we actually win a war in the future with these problems: spending more on gender
and diversity matters than actual ship seaworthiness.
Sanchez quickly noticed that his new helmsman seemed flustered by the difficulty of having to control the ship’s steering and speed at the same time. He decided to split the helm, giving Bordeaux control over the ship’s wheel. While Bordeaux remained at his station, Dontrius Mitchell, a second sailor on the bridge, was assigned to take control of the speed of the McCain at a neighboring station known as the lee helm.
Sanchez’s order was unexpected — he had not discussed the possibility in meetings with the crew before entering the straits. Nor had the crew practiced the maneuver much. Bordeaux could only remember doing it once or twice before.
They should have known after that drunken bastard crashed 3 or 5 planes.
“Not many people of my age can say, ‘Hey, I just drove a giant-ass battleship,’” said Bordeaux, 23.
NOBODY your age can say it. There haven’t been any battleships in service in your lifetime.
The USS John McCain is not named after the late turncoat senator. It is named after his father, an admiral in World War II & Vietnam and a genuine war hero.
About a week ago, I listened to a podcast about the flight of Apollo 8, which took three astronauts to the moon and back without landing on the moon. The astronauts splashed down in the Pacific on December 27, 1968, meaning that several Navy ships, including a carrier, needed to go to sea by Christmas in order to pick them up. The podcast included the meeting between NASA chiefs and the elder McCain, where the elder McCain agreed to send out the ships. I was glad the podcast said nothing about the younger McCain, except to comment that the admiral’s son was a prisoner in Hanoi at the time.
It keeps moving to the left.
Not many people of my age can say, ‘Hey, I just drove a giant-ass battleship,’” said Bordeaux, 23.
I don’t think giant-ass or battleship mean what this guy thinks they mean...
I guess this new breed of ‘reporters’ figures everyone reads the headline and moves on
OR doesn’t pay attention
OR think we are just too stupid to figure out obvious ‘faux pas’
Also, if the CO was ANYWHERE but the bridge in a situation of entering port in HEAVY traffic he should have been bounced immediately for lack of common sense.
Apparently basic seamanship and watch standing are no longer taught?
There is an emergency system. Pick up the intraship phone or the mike for the 1-MC system, tell engineering to bring the ship to a stop and to assume emergency steering duties. The ship can be manually ‘driven’ from the engineering department with voice commands sent from an observer above decks. This system isn’t ideal but it works; in World War II numerous US warships fought and sailed on with their bridges shot away or blown off, several suffering enough damage that the voice commands were given by the wounded commanding officer standing on the deck shouting to the engineers through the holes in said deck. It still works today.
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