Sixteen from the KC-130 from VMGR-452...
Five from the Blackhawk from the the 25th Combat Aviation Brigade out of Hawaii...
And now ten from the USS John S. McCain from 7th Fleet...
Thirty-eight of America's finest who won't be going home.
Thirty-eight men and women who gave the last full measure of devotion...
Not lost in combat, but lost in the everyday business of the profession of arms.
To me they all count as deaths in the family, I mourn.
Prayers for those left behind and may God take those fine men and women into Heaven and may He grant peace and comfort to their families and friends.
Amen.
People tend to forget that freedom is not free and that there is a price to eternal vigilance. Those who have taken up arms and stood upon the ramparts know that all who have joined us are our brothers and our sisters. The loss of one is a loss to us all. Godspeed to them and condolences to their families.
ReplyDeleteWell said Dave.
DeleteAmen.
DeleteAmen too.
Deleteand Amen.
ReplyDeleteAmen yet again. OAS you have captured it correctly, we are all diminished by their loss. A salute and a toast to those who have gone ahead.
ReplyDeleteIt never fails to surprise me how the loss of those men and women hurts. Combat, non-combat, doesn't matter, I feel it. It seems to get worse with age.
DeleteDo I miss wearing the uniform? Yes, indeed I do.
Amen.
ReplyDeleteAmen!
ReplyDeleteIt can be a dangerous business, what we do. Always attempt to reduce it, but by the nature, it never goes away.
ReplyDelete/
L.J.
Yup, that right there. There is always some risk.
DeleteHey Old AF Sarge;
ReplyDeleteThe business is war and training for war even in peacetime is risky. We know it when we don the uniform and know that the full measure may be asked of us. Yes I still miss the uniform, the risk and camaraderie you can't get anywhere else. Honors to those.
Yeah, especially the camaraderie.
DeleteWhat you wrote, Amen.
ReplyDeletePaul L. Quandt
I know that aircraft stop flying but there is no excuse for ship's colliding and, I'll bet, we'll find that someone was utterly negligent in the crash. Or willfull. We have to add that to our lexicon.
ReplyDeleteI have to concur. Someone, or some group of someones, messed up big time.
DeleteKnowing next to nothing about Ship handling and such (OK, actually know nothing at all about that), what are the probabilities of two DDG's (and I read somewhere ABM capable DDG's) becoming disabled in the same theater in very similar manners? Don't want to go all conspiracy theory, but the timing and coincidences seem suspect.
ReplyDeleteWell, this has been making the rounds on the net...
Deletehttp://www.voltairenet.org/article185860.html
What if someone has come up with a way to remotely hack the onboard GPS?
Hacking the GPS should not cause two ships to collide. Excessive reliance on electronic navigation aids is a really bad idea.
DeleteI looked at the article, too much automation is a bad thing in many cases.
Juvat - one instance is a tragedy, two and I start thinking "Act of War."
DeletePerhaps it is simply a coincidence, exhaustion and lack of training is my main suspect.
Commander of 7th Fleet is now unemployed.
Ships have been sailing through the Strait of Malacca, Tokyo Wan, San Francisco Bay, The English Channel, Strait of Gibraltar, long before there was GPS, Omega, or even LORAN :) It's the eyes of ship, the Officer of the Deck, the Conning Officer, and particularly their Lookouts, who have kept ships safe in traffic for centuries. Even if someone is trying to run you down in another ship, you can see it coming in anything but a dense fog. My paramount question for the investigation of both collisions is "Where were the After Lookouts?" There is no way a Navy ship underway should not know about another vessel coming up from abaft the beam like this. The aft lookout should have been >screaming< into their phones to the bridge long before either ship got close. I refuse to believe that Navy's "optimum manning" has reduced things to the point where we no longer steam with at least an aft lookout. Who else will report a man overboard, at the very least?
Delete/
L.J.
And that right there, L.J., is the question of the hour.
DeleteYou can't hack a lookout, an OOD's binoculars, the view out the bridge wing, etc. Next to impossible to hack steering or engine controls, and those DDGs can put on the throttle pretty damn fast- sports cars compared to a freighter. My boss, a recent former DDG CO, thinks everyone was asleep on FITZ. Jury is still out on McCain.
DeleteContinuing sadness - even from my day. KIT (killed in training) it may as well be KIA it hurts the same. What is action, anyway?
ReplyDeleteTrue.
DeleteI just hope that TPTB can get to the bottom of why this is happening and put a stop to it tut suite!! I can't imagine the pain the families must be feeling. To have a loved one killed in battle, everyone knows it is a possibility...to have a loved one killed in their bunk cause the ship was T-boned!!! That is unacceptable! At least to me. If there was supposed to be an aft lookout, but due to advances in technology that is something that is no longer done...may be time to re-discover old traditions...just saying.
ReplyDeleteExactly.
DeleteI stood all of my underway watches in CIC, most of them on the surfaces search radar,
ReplyDeleteI cannot believe that anyone could let this happen twice in such a short period of time.
It is incomprehensible to me.
Hence my delay in commenting.
DeleteRoger that.
Delete