Said to be made aboard the USS Hancock (CV- 19) in 1955.
It’s stupid and slapstick stuff, but couldn’t be done
in today’s uptight politically correct navy.
Get a cup of coffee, sit back and waste about 11 minutes
watching a bunch of young 1956 navy pilots goofing off.
USS Iowa at Richmond, California 2/24/11
It’s great that the Iowa is going to be a museum ship in Los Angeles, but I hope they are prepared to spend a lot of money to maintain this huge piece of steel. It has been sitting in the Reserve Fleet for something like 20 years. There is rust everywhere, the teak decks are a total mess. There won’t be a crew of nearly 2,000 to scrape paint and keep the 1930’s technology working. It’s very difficult to keep up a large ship with the handful of volunteers that typically sign up for such an adventure.
In addition, switches, relays, limit switches, electric motors, controllers, and other parts of this ship haven’t been manufactured for probably at least 60 years. A ship like this would tax the abilities of a fully equipped and operating shipyard.
I really hope it works out, but many other military museum ships are in dire financial straits.
This thing runs on a mixture of diesel and algae.
Last year, the Navy paid $424 per gallon for 20,055 gallons of bio-diesel made from algae, which set a world record at the time for the cost of fuel.
Brazil already has these. Cool video from the Swedish manufacturer.
February 1943 All Hands Magazine
She could look just a little more happy about being in the Navy
What’s left of the General H. S. Vandenberg
The 523-foot-long ship that once tracked spacecraft blastoffs from Cape Canaveral as well as Russian missile launches during the Cold War is in Key West Harbor undergoing final preparations to be scuttled.
More here.
In better days:
Bethlehem installed approximately 425,000 feet of cable on each ship. Some 540 “black boxes” containing the vital relays and electronic devices comprising the ship’s radar, data handling, telemetry, meteorological, timing and communications equipment also were installed. About 40,000 wiring connections were made to these boxes by the shipyard workers alone. Thousands of other connections were made by some of the suppliers of this sophisticated equipment.
The two ships — the GENERAL ARNOLD and the GENERAL VANDENBERG — have a length of 520 feet, a beam of 71 1/2 feet, and a sea speed of more than 17 knots. Each is a complete station for its two-hundred man crew, half of whom will devote their efforts solely to the ship’s instrumentation. Each vessel has been outfitted with 636 compartments, including staterooms, storerooms, offices, a hospital, dining and recreational areas, a theater, laundries, lounges, lockers, galley, pantries — virtually everything a land-based station has.
The decking for the GENERAL VANDENBERG alone required about 50,000 square feet of composition tile or rubber materials.
Some portions of the superstructure were completely removed. Later additions to the superstructure included a new house atop the pilot house.
All of the ship’s present masts are completely new. The old stack was removed, and this system relocated farther aft with a new and higher stack to minimize the possibility of fuel gases interfering with the telemetry antenna. A complete weather station and hangar for weather balloons were built.
Link here.
PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (July 15, 2008 ) Cmdr. Larry Hill, executive officer of Naval Station Pearl Harbor, describes the attack on Pearl Harbor to actor Mike Myers at the USS Arizona Memorial. Myers was shown various historic sites, including the Missouri, Utah and Arizona Memorials. U.S. Navy photo by Chief Mass Communication Specialist David Rush (Released)
USNS Mercy
The Military Sealift Command USNS Mercy transits the western Pacific Ocean, May 27, 2008, in support of Pacific Partnership 2008, a humanitarian deployment to the Republic of the Philippines, Vietnam, Timor Leste, Papua New Guinea and the Federated States of Micronesia.
The last we heard, was that USNS Mercy’s sister ship, USNS Comfort, was roaming around Honduras and Central America instead of the Mideast.
Doesn’t it seem as if there might be folks both military and civilian to look after in the area of… say, Iraq?
The North Coast Curmudgeon 