CPJ interview - Nov 11

[LibertyTurns]

As a sailor, turning a ship into the wind is the LAST thing you try and do...

It's possible to sail into the wind, but it takes an awful lot of extra work to do it.

You must not be a Sailor.

 

[Heisman's Ghost]

His 12-year-old grandson was a Clemson/Swinney camper a couple of years ago. Came time to split the teams and play a game of flag. His team was doing badly. Went to the coach and suggested, "If you want me to start a fight, I will."

Coach passed.

That's a good story but I got that beat: Clemson was playing Alabama some time in the mid 1960s. Clemson was famous for big, albeit slow, linemen while Alabama was notoriously, small, fast, and mean. The press loved the theatrics and spectacle of big Clemson against highly rated but much smaller Alabama. Frank claimed all week that Alabama was bigger than the announced weights and offered to check the scales for the Bear. The Bear, who could be deviously clever when it suited him agreed but told the trainers to secretly rig the scales to record 25lbs less. Much to the delight of the assembled press, Frank, who was huge himself, gets on the scales and shouts: "Damn Bear, these scales are right after all!!" Fun times, but you will never see something like that again. Of course, Frank and the Bear had rigged the whole thing for the amusement of the press and to get publicity for their respective teams.

 

[TheSilasSonRising]

As a sailor, turning a ship into the wind is the LAST thing you try and do...

It's possible to sail into the wind, but it takes an awful lot of extra work to do it.

No, i am for sure no sailor. I was thinking in terms of heading into the wind so as to launch aircraft - or in our case Yellow Jackets!

I want nothing to do with creatures being able to come up from beneath me, when i can't see them, to take a nibble. I want to be able to at least try and escape with my butt hauling on terra firma.

 

[Augusta_Jacket]

You must not be a Sailor.

I was in the Coast Guard and went to the US Coast Guard Academy. Sailing a boat into the wind is only preferable if you're launching aircraft from a carrier, and under sail, it's only possible with the greatest of skill. Speaking of sailboats, ideally, you don't want to sail with the wind at your back either. You're much better off with the wind over your beam to fill the sails.

 

[Augusta_Jacket]

No, i am for sure no sailor. I was thinking in terms of heading into the wind so as to launch aircraft - or in our case Yellow Jackets!

I want nothing to do with creatures being able to come up from beneath me, when i can't see them, to take a nibble. I want to be able to at least try and escape with my butt hauling on terra firma.

Yeah, I got what you meant, I just couldn't resist picking the nit. I sailed across the Atlantic on a three masted sailing ship the summer after my freshman year at the Academy so I tend to think of sailing as I learned it, in very traditional terms.

 

[LibertyTurns]

I was in the Coast Guard and went to the US Coast Guard Academy. Sailing a boat into the wind is only preferable if you're launching aircraft from a carrier, and under sail, it's only possible with the greatest of skill. Speaking of sailboats, ideally, you don't want to sail with the wind at your back either. You're much better off with the wind over your beam to fill the sails.

Absolutely, But if you’ve ever done long transits it’s no fun being hit by beam seas all day, every day for a week. And yes, you preferably want wind on the bow for the most important Sailor job launching & recovering aircraft not to mention replenishment ops. If you’re not chasing submarines, launching aircraft for strike missions, launching Tomahawks, shooting guns or firing missiles what the heck are you doing on the water anyway besides getting a sun tan?

 

[Skeptic]

Absolutely, But if you’ve ever done long transits it’s no fun being hit by beam seas all day, every day for a week. And yes, you preferably want wind on the bow for the most important Sailor job launching & recovering aircraft not to mention replenishment ops. If you’re not chasing submarines, launching aircraft for strike missions, launching Tomahawks, shooting guns or firing missiles what the heck are you doing on the water anyway besides getting a sun tan?

I hired a guy once, a Navy vet, whose job entailed hunting submarines from helicopters towing hydrophones. I asked him whether, in maneuvers sometimes involving 2-3 other countries, he had ever discovered a nuclear attack boat. Never, he said. "Never." His answer was instructive: "If our subs don't want to be found, they won't." But, I said, the Russians say they can track our subs by satellite. I think he is still laughing.

 

[LibertyTurns]

I hired a guy once, a Navy vet, whose job entailed hunting submarines from helicopters towing hydrophones. I asked him whether, in maneuvers sometimes involving 2-3 other countries, he had ever discovered a nuclear attack boat. Never, he said. "Never." His answer was instructive: "If our subs don't want to be found, they won't." But, I said, the Russians say they can track our subs by satellite. I think he is still laughing.

We tracked them all the time. Not easy but not that hard either. If you’ve ever dropped an active sonobuoy array near a US sub, well, let’s say they get really pissed off. There’s some on here that grew up in the day when subs would take pictures of Carrier Battle Groups and mail them to the Commanders so they could get a good chuckle. It probably still happens because a fair amount of the force is now basically quasi competent, but a couple decades ago if you let a sub into the screen by accident you’d get your butt handed to you, particularly a foreign sub. There’s no excuse for that.

 

[Augusta_Jacket]

you’re not chasing submarines, launching aircraft for strike missions, launching Tomahawks, shooting guns or firing missiles what the heck are you doing on the water anyway besides getting a sun tan?

I was in the Coast Guard, so typically I was on the seas rescuing people who didn't know how to sail, but thought they did...

 

[Augusta_Jacket]

We tracked them all the time. Not easy but not that hard either. If you’ve ever dropped an active sonobuoy array near a US sub, well, let’s say they get really pissed off. There’s some on here that grew up in the day when subs would take pictures of Carrier Battle Groups and mail them to the Commanders so they could get a good chuckle. It probably still happens because a fair amount of the force is now basically quasi competent, but a couple decades ago if you let a sub into the screen by accident you’d get your butt handed to you, particularly a foreign sub. There’s no excuse for that.

Wasn't it the USS Kitty Hawk that had the collision with the Soviet sub that broke their carrier screen back in the '80's?

 

[LibertyTurns]

Wasn't it the USS Kitty Hawk that had the collision with the Soviet sub that broke their carrier screen back in the '80's?

Yes, the Petrapovlosk got run over by the “S****” Kitty. The Carrier Battle Group was doing exercises and allegedly had “killed” the Russian sub a dozen or so times in the days leading up to the fiasco. The sub had to be towed home. A piece of the sub’s prop was stuck in the Kitty’s hull. I’m not sure if that was the same sub the Brits ran into about 3-4 years prior.