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  1. #61

    Re: Navy crash and blow boaters

    Quote Originally Posted by Scarlett View Post
    By the time a Captain gets command of a carrier he has an ton of experience including war ships and a so called deep draft command, like a big amphibious ship. Sometimes junior Admirals got there with Moreland based glitter commands. So I would take a seasoned experienced Captain any day. John
    The CO of a carrier is a pilot.

    And regarding experience of Naval officers' ability to drive ships, that was the point of this thread. Merchant marine officers know how to drive ships. The navy, not so much.
    FTFD... i drive a slow 1968 41c381

  2. #62

    Re: Navy crash and blow boaters

    My bad got threads mixed up. As to carrier captains they are x pilots and most of them have very little ship handling experience. A carrier like that will probably also have a captain as XO hopefully not an x pilot, but with more ship handling experience. John
    Mahalo V
    1974 53 Motoryacht
    Hull Number 406
    San Diego, Ca. Ready 32 Nordic Tug, Brunswick Ga.

  3. #63

    Re: Navy crash and blow boaters

    Isn't the CO of a carrier a former pilot? I know they call come up through what I've heard called the "F18 Mafia" but I would think that when someone is given command of a brand new vessel that size, they have been the CO of other comparable vessels. Also, doesn't the Navy have officers whose specific duty it is to drive ships- in other words, not former pilots?

  4. #64

    Re: Navy crash and blow boaters

    I am not really speaking negatively here, but rather budget and schedule overruns are the nature of the beast in US Gov contracting, especially in terms of a) highly complexity and b) clean sheet engineering.

    The "Big Three" in project management are: $, time, and resources. Note that in one case, a project went $8.5B over cost, bankrupting the company. Turns out, all the contractors, major ones all (huge), were reporting never-ending false status reports; Audits would have been nice.

    Back to the post. In the case of the Ford, both more $ and time and then resources! Quotes below are from Wikipedia.

    Schedule: Note that the Ford was commissioned just recently in Jul, 2017. "The ship was originally scheduled for launch in July 2013 and delivery in 2015". So that is a 2 year "deliverable" missed date; this is some big deliverable! In fact, in some reports, the Navy accepted an "incomplete ship", in order to declare delivery; see below re: GAO.

    Cost: "As of 2013, construction costs were estimated at $12.8 billion, 22% over the 2008 budget, plus $4.7 billion in research and development costs. Because of budget difficulties, the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Jonathan Greenert, warned there might be a two-year delay beyond 2016 in completing Gerald R. Ford.[45] The GAO reported that the price cap would be met by the Navy accepting an incomplete ship for that cost.[46] "

    Risk: As advanced as the ship is, I understand the R&D component. But a major "risk" set aside for cost and schedule, should have been in place; been there, done that.

    But the $4B savings in crew over 10 years, has no bearing, in my view, regarding wartime readiness. Very high uptime and war-making capability should have been the prime criterion/standard and not cost savings; unless, readiness and weaponry was enhanced, while reducing crew. We have concepts in IT of 5 9's (99.999% uptime) and 6 sigma (unheard uptime of in my experience, although we hit 100% in bursts.). Most operations see 3 9's (99.9% uptime). When it comes to weapons systems, I would desire 100% uptime. When hostile forces are incoming and you want to respond "down range" with vengeance, having systems inoperative is bad for our side, for lack of a better phrase.

    Again, sorry to hijack the thread, but it went there to a small degree.
    Last edited by spartonboat1; 08-10-2017 at 12:07 AM.
    50 Years on the Great Lakes...

  5. #65

    Re: Navy crash and blow boaters

    When I was in the Navy (50's - early 60's) the vast majority of skippers of our ships were not and never were pilots, with the exception of aircraft carriers, which did have some pilots as skippers. Running the ship was a different command from flight operations as each aircraft squadron aboard ship had it's own CO and that CO did not run the ship. Deployments of squadrons included aircraft, pilots, crew including ground crew/maintenance personnel. Upon completion of a cruise the squadrons including all their personnel returned to their home bases on land and the ships company would take her into port without most of the planes and air crews aboard. We must keep in mind however that when I served in the Navy we had wooden ships and iron men as opposed to now. Actually I am very proud of our Navy then and now. Screw up's happen and we don't really know for sure what really went wrong. A thorough investigation is being done but regardless of fault, I think some Navy careers are essentially over.

    Walt

  6. #66

    Re: Navy crash and blow boaters

    When I was living in Norfolk in the early 80s, I remember that when carriers came into port, all the planes would precede them- if you were on the beach at Virginia Beach, you'd see them come in one by one, and land at Oceana NAS. The carrier was usually a day or so behind, from what I recall, coming into the Norfolk Naval Base. It was enjoyable to watch, because they'd fly in low and slow, so you could actually see them cruising along. I don't know what the pre-landing speed was on those planes- but they didn't look like they were doing more than 150 knots or so.

  7. #67

    Re: Navy crash and blow boaters

    I used to tow banners up and down Va. Beach in the 80's. Had to transition through NAS to get to the beach from the airport. Loved watching the fleet fly in, they would also bring in the not so airworthy planes back. Many times I had to do a tight 360 and hold for half and hour or so, so the jets could limp back on one motor, with smoke pouring out of both exhausts.

    The best time was when the jets would tow target banners for the gunnery school stationed there. When the canons went off, thought my plane would explode from the percussion. Also sometimes the guns would miss the target and hit the planes. They would fly back with sheet metal hanging and again tons of smoke. There were also ships towing targets past the horizon that only I could see from 800 feet up. Hear the explosion, wait for my plane to stop shaking, and the splash offshore was tremendous.

    Great times.

    Have a great week,
    Tim

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