WARTIME STEAMING

 It is nothing new and it is what warships were designed for but it doesn't really take into account the burn factor on men. I spent years at wartime steaming in the Persian Gulf and it was easy enough because it basically required us to keep 50% of our weapons manned and ready at all times. This was something the ship's manning document accounted for and the second and third times I did it the ship was actually overmanned per the original manning documents. The first ship, though, was a one year unaccompanied tour and the old man let every single man go on his 365th day +- a day or two based on our location and the expected channel flights out of Bahrain. 

The people at the Bureau of Personnel thought he was unreasonable in this regard and for about 4 months we were steaming along, wartime steaming along with about 50% of the required crew because they refused to detail in replacements. We were in Port and Starboard watch sections the whole time but spent a good deal of that time steaming towards Africa and the Indian Ocean not up in the war zone.

It's a little different conducting wartime steaming in a hot war zone under continuous air attack for days on end. If, at Condition III Wartime Steaming, we were attacked, we would go to General Quarters and all hands would man their battle stations which mainly consisted at that point of manning the other weapons and manning the Repair Lockers. The difference is that at General Quarters the ship is closed up and is supposed to stay that way to limit any damage from explosions and there is no sleep, no hot food, and it gets real old very quickly. In other words, you cannot do it forever. You can only do it for a few hours at a stretch and if every break of 10 minutes is followed by another attack, well, you can see the problem. The last time we really did anything like this was OIF.

I read that the USS George Washington has withdrawn from the Persian Gulf after almost a week of nonstop combat operations. I'm kind of surprised she stayed as long as she did. Back in the day it would not have been necessary since 100% of Iran could be struck by carrier aircraft operating in the North Arabian Sea. The days of long range carrier aviation and fighter bombers with legs is long gone but their loss imposes some real hardships on those waging war in close to hostile shores. Of course, we've known that since we started the carrier aviation business.

I'd be interested in seeing a film of the work of the DDGs in continuous action for weeks. A documentary of the crew doing its thing for a week in the Persian Gulf under continuous air attack. I don't think we will since accommodation and time is at a real premium in situations like that but I expect to see something about life on a carrier during long duration in-close combat operations.

I see that one of our submarines sank one of Iran's last remaining warships somewhere off the coast of Ceylon. It struck me as somewhat amusing because I was thinking back to my days on ships and how we dealt with trash and garbage is very different from how our Fleets do it today. Back then we bagged it and threw it off the fantail. No weights, no provisions for it to sink, we just left a trail of floating trashbags behind as we proceeded. No, we didn't dump it continuously, just every time we held sweepers or the mess decks master at arms got tired of loafers and ordered the garbage dumped. We left a trail of bread crumbs.

Imagine you're on a submarine and you have oodles of ways to positively identify your target using acoustic, electronic and visual means but just to be sure, you pull up to one of those bags of trash and read the mail there and find out that your target is indeed the enemy ship you were looking for. Target ID is a foregone conclusion at that point and its weapons free!