The Subtitle Says This Is the Blog Board

[Abbot Mythos]

This is not what I expected. But then, I've never started a blog before.

Anyway, having spent far too much of my misspent youth on a big, much older, ugly, gray ship, this particular subject is of special interest to me:

Moldy showers and no soap: Military families are outraged by conditions on USS Lincoln

"The aircraft carrier's long deployment in the Iran war is raising concerns that the sailors and Marines on board are facing poor conditions, low supplies and fatigue."

As per this article:

"The crew of the Lincoln has had only two days off the aircraft carrier since it left its home port in San Diego in November. The ship had a short port call in Guam in December and then did not have another stop until July 7, when it briefly pulled into Oman after 208 continuous days at sea — a modern-day record for a Navy aircraft carrier.

Long workdays with few breaks can lead to accidents, said Brett Snow, a Navy veteran whose son is serving on the Lincoln. Even when a carrier is operating in peacetime, it is an extremely hazardous place to work, Snow said.  "It's the most dangerous place in the world already, and now you're grinding it out, day in and day out, with no breaks," he said. "It's an environment that's ripe for accidents."" 

And, further along in the article:

"Snow, the Navy veteran, says he has noticed carrier deployments getting longer. That will make it harder for the Navy to persuade sailors to stay in the service when their tours are up, he said. "If this trend continues, it's going to impact retention and it's going to impact operational safety."" 

Now, having experienced something like this myself, I can testify that an insane deployment like this is going to have serious, long term consequences.

On my first cruise, my boat was deployed for 300 days. (This is currently listed as the fourth (4th) longest deployment of a USN aircraft carrier.) But, my own longest time at sea between port calls happened during my second cruise, and that was for forty-two (42) days. So, when people asked us how long we had been at sea, we told them, "Two days longer than the Arc." And, although we thought it was a bitch, it was nothing close to what sailors today are expected to endure. (Still, our surprise bonus after being out at sea for those forty-two days was a port call in Athens, Greece, just in time for the festivities of the infamous "Athens Polytechnic Uprising.")

And, from my own experience, making it "harder for the Navy to persuade sailors to stay in the service when their tours are up," is the least of the consequences to be expected from this long deployment. Now, in truth, after my own long deployment, there were only a few cases of outright desertion. But, a noticeable percentage of the crew, many of whom were "snipes" from the boiler room crew, went AWOL for extended periods. And, many of those AWOL sailors elected to finally turn themselves in at naval stations far away from where any aircraft carriers were based. And so, months after finally returning to our home port, we started hearing stories about AWOL guys who had told the officers who had taken them into custody that they were willing to serve their punishment in the brig, but would go AWOL again if they were sent back to duty on an aircraft carrier.

Still, the desertions and AWOL sailors were not the worst of the consequences from my own boat's "extended deployment." But, that's another story.             

[Abbot Mythos]

One of the consequences of my boat's "extended deployment" was the following:

Two Days of Racial Unrest On Navy Carrier Reported

This is a very short article, so I'm not posting any quotations from it.

And, to put this in prospective, the last of our combat troops had left South Vietnam on March 29, 1973. So, there was little chance that my boat would have to endure another "extended deployment" at the end of our "normal" six month Mediterranean cruise scheduled for 1973-74. And, the next cruise was not extended, even though it was memorable in its own right.

But, those of us who had nothing to do with instigating those "Two Days of Racial Unrest" called it exactly what it was: A mutiny.

Now, back in the day, aircraft carriers should have been equipped with revolving doors, as sailors going AWOL from them was a common occurrence. And, given the high crew turnover, and a carrier's very high demand for warm bodies, many of the dregs of the fleet eventually found themselves assigned to aircraft carriers. Still, we seemed to have had a lot more serious troublemakers coming aboard in the summer of 1973 than we had had before the previous "extended deployment." There was also a lot of grumbling, and fear, in the ranks about the possibility of yet another "extended deployment" in 1973-74. But, "racial unrest?" No, not so much. 

I don't remember the exact day, but walking through the hanger deck in the early afternoon I saw that the weather was near perfect, the hanger deck was near empty, and the ship was barely moving. And, that meant nothing was landing or taking off, which is definitely not normal for an aircraft carrier steaming in broad daylight, in good weather, during Carrier Qualifications. Then an acquaintance approached me and said he had heard that something was going on up on the flight deck. As neither of us knew what was happening, we decided to go up to the flight deck and see for ourselves.

When we got up there, we saw a tight cluster of about 400 people standing in the middle of the catapult launch area, just forward of the island structure. When we asked people watching from the sidelines what was going on, all anyone could tell us was that the group had stopped flight operations. Now, the watching group was less than half the size of the group blocking the flight deck. But, members of the masters-at-arms force were among the watchers, and doing nothing.

While my acquaintance and I watched in stunned silence, we heard a voice behind us say something to the effect of, "I can't believe this. I'm going to take a picture, or no one will believe me when I tell them about it."

Turning to look at the photographer, my first acquaintance and I both recognized him as being a mutual acquaintance. (On a ship with over 4,000 people aboard, you have your circle of friends, a larger circle of acquaintances, and a big boatload of strangers.) But, as soon as the photographer raise his camera, a master-at-arms rushed towards him, and demanded that he hand it over.

And, without even thinking about it, those of us nearest the photographer closed ranks, blocked the master-at-arms, and opened a path for the photographer to run to the back of the island structure to take the crew's ladder back down to the hanger deck. This particular master-at-arms was smarter than most, in that he did not try to force his way through us. And, when he tried to go around, he was told, "Lay a hand on him and you're going over the side. The mutineers are over there. Deal with them." And, as the flight deck of an aircraft carrier is a long way above the water, he wisely gave up the chase. But, nether that master-at-arms, nor any of his cohorts made any move to break up the mutineers.

After that, the mutineers broke into smaller groups, and rampaged through the ship for two days looking for sailors to beat up who were foolish enough to be walking around alone. Fortunately, no one was seriously injured, while the officer corps walked around with marine guards, and did nothing.

When the violence finally petered out, we pulled into port, and the mutineers disappeared from the ship. A couple of weeks later, while out at sea again, I heard that the above little article about the mutiny had appeared in The New York Times, but I never thought I'd ever be lucky enough to get a copy of it.

Oh, and after the mutineers disappeared from the ship, the officer corps came down on those of us who didn't mutiny like a ton of bricks. But, they quickly got tired of being told that those of us left aboard were not the ones who had mutinied, and they wisely backed off.

The aftermath of all of this came the following year when the ship had to go into dry dock in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, for repairs to damage sustained in the North Atlantic during our return to the states from the Mediterranean. It was then that we learned, from some of the mutineers themselves, that the US Navy's punishment for mutiny was shore duty at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, and not being allowed to reenlist.

One of the oldest jokes in the Navy is to ask someone, "Do you know the difference between a fairy tale and a sea story?" If the answer is the usual, "No," they are then told, "Well ... a fairy tale begins, 'Once upon a time.' But, a sea story begins, 'This is no shit!'" And, the above is a rare thing, being that it's a sea story that's 100% true. But, if you don't believe me, I don't give a shit.

[Doktor Howl]

Well, these sailors have been eating spam and canned beets 3 meals a day for a few months.

I am sure morale is high.

[Abbot Mythos]

From my experience, I don't find much of what is written in this article surprising:

USS Abraham Lincoln families press Navy leaders over sailors' mental health

As per this article:

"My son is currently on that ship and listening to him say that he and his shipmates constantly think about jumping off the ship just for relief is so hard to listen to," one worried parent wrote to Stars and Stripes in July. "We are all tucked in at night in our beds at night meanwhile our loved ones are out there fighting with no understanding as to what they're defending."

Sailors aboard Lincoln separately described an incident in which a crew member was prevented from jumping from the ship.

"We already had an instance where watch standers had to stop someone from jumping," one sailor said. The ship's crew was informed about the incident, which occurred a few months ago, during a ship-wide announcement, sailors said."

The Navy did not respond directly to questions about the incident."

My only real surprise is that the above reads like it was an isolated incident. Now, this sort of thing was not an everyday occurrence on my old boat. But, it did happen often enough for the novelty of it to have worn off. Back in the day, in most cases, unhappy sailors went over the side to set themselves up to receive General Discharges, rather than to actually commit suicide. They typically jumped from a forward sponson deck near the bow of the ship, so there would be plenty of opportunity for them to be spotted in the water by the lookouts as the ship steamed past. And, the jumpers often enlisted a friend to watch and report to a lookout that they had see someone jump. I also remember that during our departure for the Mediterranean in the fall of 1973, my friends and I watched something like six different guys jump overboard, from different parts of the ship, between the time we cast off in the harbor, and the time it took us to reach the middle of the breakwater. And, one of them really impressed us by doing a swan dive off of the flight deck.

It is not my intent to make light of any of this. Because, it honestly appears to me that as bad as being aboard an aircraft carrier was back in the day, it's much, much worse today.

[Abbot Mythos]

My WW II Era boat was already old long before I stepped aboard. And so, it was scrapped a few years after I finished serving my sentence hitch.

And, it's hard for me to decide what the worst thing was about the food on my old boat. It's pretty much a three-way tie between the food poisoning about once a month, the monotony of being served dried up roast beef nearly every fucking day, and the monotony of having to stand in line for hours every day just to get fed. Taken all together, I, and most of the crew, found ourselves in the unpleasant situation of eating simply because we had to eat.

It took me a long time to find out, but a corpsman eventually told me that I, and the other few hundred random shipmates who were routinely suffering from "stomach virus" about once a month, had not been stricken with any kind of "stomach virus." In reality, we were getting food poisoning from Bacillus cereus, the bacterium that quickly propagates on cooked pasta that is allowed to cool and sit for too long at room temperature before being eaten. (There were other causes for some of the food poisoning incidents, but Bacillus cereus was the main culprit.) However, the ship's medical staff were under orders to tell the crew that those frequent food poisoning episodes were cases of "stomach virus." Anyway, after I stopped eating the galley's pasta, I never got food poisoning again.

Now, the roast beef we were being served nearly every fucking day was usually dried out. And even worse, if we didn't get it for lunch, we got it for dinner, or Midrats (Midnight Rations). I was so sick of roast beef that I refused to eat it for years after I got out of the Navy. But, eventually, at a family gathering, I found myself in a situation where I could not gracefully refuse it. But, eating it reminded me that roast beef is really pretty good if it's properly prepared, and not force-fed to you every fucking day.

On my boat, we actually looked forward to eating C-rations, mainly because they provided us with a little variety. But, C-rations were only issued about once a month, usually for lunch, when the boat was running General Quarters drills.

Looking back on it, the activity that occupied most of my time while I was serving my sentence during my hitch, after sleeping, was standing in line. And, that was mostly because the main galley, that had to feed somewhere around 2,500 low rate sailors a day, had only one serving line. (Enlisted sailors are typically described as having "ratings" and "rate," rather than military "rank.") So, no matter what shift I worked, to avoid standing in a long line for breakfast, I began getting up at 3:30 AM, when the galley first opened, to eat. Then, I would go back to bed for a few hours, if possible. And, if I wasn't working a day shift, I generally skipped lunch altogether. To me, the food just wasn't worth the time it took to stand in line to get it. On the other hand, if I was working a day shift, I had to be given time off to eat. So I then stood in the long line with everyone else, typically for between a half to three-quarters of an hour to get fed.

But, it was tough to avoid having to stand in line for dinner for anywhere from half an hour, to three-quarters of an hour, or more. Going without eating from an early breakfast to midnight is hard if you're required to be physically active. Even so, I occasionally skipped dinner. But, I couldn't realistically do so every day.         

Now, the line for Midrats was usually not very long. But, I had already become a "biphasic sleeper" by getting up very early for breakfast, and then going back to sleep. So, having to further divide my sleep into three phases, to avoid wasting a lot of time standing in line to eat, was just not practical on a noisy, crowded ship where I had zero privacy. (I'm still a biphasic sleeper to this day.)

Now, there was also a small forward galley on the boat, that was open from perhaps 11:00 AM to sometime in the mid-afternoon. But, the menu was limited to "sliders," "clinkers," and "bug juice." That's it, nothing else. Anyway, the "sliders" were burgers made from such poor quality beef that you could see big chunks of veins and arteries sticking out of them. And, sometimes, but not very often, we could get them with cheese. (I have no idea why serving cheeseburgers was so difficult.) And, we called those things "sliders" because they were so greasy that they slid around on the grill like hockey pucks on ice when the boat rocked and rolled. (I was shocked when, many years later, White Castle began advertising their "sliders" on TV. They made their ads sound like a slider was something really good.) The "clinkers" were intended to be French fries extruded from some kind of powdered potato gunk. And, we called  them "clinkers" because they were so hard that they bounced, and made a distinctive clinking noise when they landed on our metal trays. One had to be extremely hungry to be even tempted to eat "clinkers." And, of course, bug juice was the Navy's version of Kool-Aid. The only saving grace to eating any of that crap was that you rarely had to stand in line to get it. Most sailors, including myself, just walked by, grabbed a slider, and gulped it down while continuing on down the passageway. Few ever bothered to sit down to eat anything from the forward galley.

But, as bad as the food was on my boat, it sounds like the food being currently served aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln is even worse.

Back in the day, in the Mediterranean, the logistics required to replenish an aircraft carrier was impressive. Replenishments took place at sea once a month. As we never tied up to a pier in the Mediterranean, only a fraction of our supplies came aboard while we were at a port of call. Replenishments at sea started shortly after dawn, with helicopters continuously delivering pallet loads of supplies, double-stacked in cargo nets, to the flight deck. And, that continued all day until near dusk. But, even after the helicopters stopped flying, it usually took until midnight to get all of the supplies off the flight deck, out of the hanger bay, and into the boat's storage compartments.

I was "ships company" rather than "air wing." But, I used to volunteer to work the flight deck during replenishments to relieve the monotony of my regular, mind-numbing, monotonous jobs. Anyway, during replenishments, my boat would slowly steam straight ahead, while somewhere between four to six cargo carrying ships and tankers formed up into two columns steaming "line ahead" on our port and starboard sides. Then, when all of the boats were in position, the helicopters pilots would begin their aerial ballet, making it look like flying those big double-rotor things was effortless.

The above two paragraphs are my attempt at quickly describing just how many ships, aircraft, and people were required to replenish just one month's worth of supplies to an aircraft carrier on deployment. And, the above short description doesn't cover the effort required to get all of those supplies from the states, or wherever, and onto all of those supply carrying ships. But, to avoid beating this particular subject to death, I'll simply add that I doubt the logistics of aircraft carrier replenishment has changed much over the years. And, I suspect today's supply ships are still taking on their cargo at logistical hubs located somewhere in the Mediterranean. If I'm right, they now have to steam through the Suez Canal, across the Red Sea, and then up to near the Gulf of Oman to deliver their cargo. Then, after all that, those same supply ships have to turn around, go back to the Mediterranean empty, and do it all over again for the other aircraft carrier(s) operating near the Strait of Hormuz.

Now, I acknowledge, there are other possible ways that aircraft carriers operating near the Strait of Hormuz could be replenished. But, no method is easy, fast, or cheap. And, some of the possible ways it could be done are far too dangerous to be worth the risk in a war zone.

Last, given what we're hearing about the problems with mail delivery to the USS Abraham Lincoln, I have to conclude that the Navy has next to no logistical capability anywhere near the Gulf of Oman. Even on my old boat, mail delivery was always dependable. Always. Mail was, and still is, delivered to, and picked up from aircraft carriers using carrier onboard delivery (COD) aircraft. These were, and still are, cheap, little, twin engine, turboprop cargo planes. The problems we're hearing about mail delivery lead me to believe that the Navy can't even get the fucking mail to an airport close enough to the aircraft carriers for a COD to be able to pick it up. (Everyone called the ugly one on my old boat "The Cod." And, I didn't even know what that acronym stood for until I recently looked it up.) 
 

[Faust]

Thanks for sharing that man, I found it fascinating. Any military force is primarily a supply chain issue (until Roger replaces them all with deathbots).

If this goes on another month, all it would take for Iran to disable the Lincoln is waft some delicious spicy food smell their way.

They could offer safe passage and a feast in exchange for the ship.

[Abbot Mythos]

Thanks for sharing that man, I found it fascinating. Any military force is primarily a supply chain issue (until Roger replaces them all with deathbots).

If this goes on another month, all it would take for Iran to disable the Lincoln is waft some delicious spicy food smell their way.

They could offer safe passage and a feast in exchange for the ship.

Thanks, Faust.

As my last post was already long, I didn't attempt to explain my reasoning behind some of my assumptions. But, since you have an interest in the topic, I'll attempt to do so now. And, I'll try to keep it brief.

First of all, as this is not the first time the US has deployed aircraft carriers in or near the Persian Gulf, I have to believe the US Navy once had some sort of workable, if rudimentary, logistical capability in that theater of operations. It appears that Kuwait was once a main logistical node, and I've seen reference made to a second node, that may have been in Bahrain, or Qatar. But, I don't remember for certain where that second node was, and I haven't been able to confirm its location. Still, it doesn't make any difference now, because with a war being fought right in the middle of the narrow Strait of Hormuz, no port within the Persian Gulf can be safely utilized by the USN by any of its ships.

Second, nothing I'm reading leads me to believe the USN is utilizing any airfields along the the east coast of Oman to transfer mail to and from our aircraft carriers via their COD aircraft. I find that odd, and it leads me to suspect that the USN can't safely and/or easily move much of anything through any of the Persian Gulf countries.

Third, our aircraft carriers are nuclear powered, but our aircraft are not. And, all of those aircraft guzzle down a lot of aviation fuel. So, I'm wonder where all of that aviation fuel is coming from, and where it's being delivered to our fleet oilers. But, I'm pretty sure it ain't being delivered from within the Persian Gulf.

Fourth, every other ship in the fleet needs fuel too. And, that fuel is probably black oil, as it's what powered my old boat, and just about everything else that floated, back in the day. So, I'm also wondering where it's coming from, and where it's being delivered to our fleet oilers. Now, black oil is a much easier commodity to procure worldwide than aviation fuel. But, I'd still like to know where the USN is getting it. And again, I'm pretty sure it ain't being delivered from within the Persian Gulf.

Last, if I had been held captive for as long as, and under the same insane conditions as the sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, I'd be seriously considering taking the offer you've described.