SPEAKING OF COVERUPS

As awful as USN ships look these days I am reminded of pulling into Mombasa, Kenya for a week long port visit during which the Supply Officer contracted with a local company to hand paint every inch of the ship white. It was interesting. They didn't use brushes to apply the paint and certainly not compressed air. They used rags tied to their hands and the workers just swarmed around dabbing on paint everywhere until all the white bits that were supposed to be white were freshly painted white from the waterline to the bootblack.

I know we could do that to every USN ship now in port anywhere in the world but for some reason we don't. Since I'm familiar with bureaucrats, Greens, Woke, DIE and the rest of the screaming morons (NAVSEA, SUPSHIP, CFFC, SURFLANT) I am sure that there are overwhelming reasons that simply make it impossible to do something so easy and simple.

We used to have a program where ships could go to the "local not quite a brig holding place for troubled sailors who were way more trouble to somebody than they were worth" and sign out a few to do things like paint over the side or clean and paint bilges but the rules governing that grew so onerous and stupid that it stopped being worth the bother long before we ran out of bad sailors. Each pair of ne'er-do-wells needed a personal supervisor who had completed the required mandatory training for employing brig-rats and since the work they did largely sucked it stopped being worth it even on ships devastated by BUPERS and their indifference to manning warships in time of combat.

I remember asking who had done the paint job on the boiler flats on my 3rd ship and was told that the guy I was relieving as CHENG had brought his wife and some of her friends down one night and they all helped paint. They did a pretty good job all things considered.