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Rick, I think I purposely left out all the "gorey" details of the port visits. Oh my is America a tame bunch of lame party wannabe's. Saw things in the PI that I would not repeat in a porno chat room (if those exist). Of course, PI ain't got nothin' on Thailand; some people will do anything for money, no? Real shame too. Oh well, maybe we can sit back and look at the videos or a brew or two someday. Greg, I tweren't in the Navy that long ago. My stint was from 84-93. Actually I was a "brown shoe" sailor. Aviation type, but still ship's company. I was an Aviation Electronics Technician (AT2) enlisted (I work for a living.) I worked on the automatic test equipment that tested all those little black boxes; still had the occassional vacuum tube and analog equipment, but mostly digital age. Lots of reel to reel; they loved that stuff for a long time. Pain in the butt to calibrate though. Good thing we don't need reel to reel on a cruiser sailboat, huh?! What can the Enterprise do? Well, I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.
With the exception of jet racing boats, and a few military hydrofoils, Enterprise was the fastest ship on the planet; at least until the USS Harry S. Truman CVN-75 was commissioned. Somehow they got the speed up over...ooops....almost spilled the beans. Well, let's put it this way, a sailing vessel would have to have a waterline of 2,704 feet to even have the theoretical capability of the same speed. There, that ought to be obvious enough. Imagine the canvas on that bad boy, huh? You mentioned "scrubbing the wake" and it reminded me of a bit of unclassified intelligence we intercepted during my second cruise in the Indian Ocean (I.O. for the sailors). As on almost all Navy craft at sea, there are always a few folks on board that can translate almost any language. We caught an SSB "conversation" in Czech/Russian that said they lost us over the horizon in the night. Their commander said to stay where they were and wait until first light, the wake disturbance would still be there and they could follow again. Many other times, we would get aerial photographs of ships' wakes doing S-curves trying to find a carrier's wake. It's a game we used to play; warfare without electronics. I can only remember one time the Ruskies won the war game; they used almost 20 subs positioned at 14 nm apart so they could get line-of-sight morse on their periscope transmitters. They were able to keep in touch and they just sat there waiting for a carrier to "cruise" by. They radioed us in the night and we had to "roll over and play dead". The next morning the entire ship got to wave at 5 Russian subs and thier crews as they paraded by. Pretty cool day. That would probably make a great movie: All the Stuff No One Knows About dedicated to all the little "games" countries play with taxpayer's dollars (or rubles). Well, enough for now; more on Saturday, no?
Rick, I think I purposely left out all the "gorey" details of the port visits. Oh my is America a tame bunch of lame party wannabe's. Saw things in the PI that I would not repeat in a porno chat room (if those exist). Of course, PI ain't got nothin' on Thailand; some people will do anything for money, no? Real shame too. Oh well, maybe we can sit back and look at the videos or a brew or two someday. Greg, I tweren't in the Navy that long ago. My stint was from 84-93. Actually I was a "brown shoe" sailor. Aviation type, but still ship's company. I was an Aviation Electronics Technician (AT2) enlisted (I work for a living.) I worked on the automatic test equipment that tested all those little black boxes; still had the occassional vacuum tube and analog equipment, but mostly digital age. Lots of reel to reel; they loved that stuff for a long time. Pain in the butt to calibrate though. Good thing we don't need reel to reel on a cruiser sailboat, huh?! What can the Enterprise do? Well, I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.
With the exception of jet racing boats, and a few military hydrofoils, Enterprise was the fastest ship on the planet; at least until the USS Harry S. Truman CVN-75 was commissioned. Somehow they got the speed up over...ooops....almost spilled the beans. Well, let's put it this way, a sailing vessel would have to have a waterline of 2,704 feet to even have the theoretical capability of the same speed. There, that ought to be obvious enough. Imagine the canvas on that bad boy, huh? You mentioned "scrubbing the wake" and it reminded me of a bit of unclassified intelligence we intercepted during my second cruise in the Indian Ocean (I.O. for the sailors). As on almost all Navy craft at sea, there are always a few folks on board that can translate almost any language. We caught an SSB "conversation" in Czech/Russian that said they lost us over the horizon in the night. Their commander said to stay where they were and wait until first light, the wake disturbance would still be there and they could follow again. Many other times, we would get aerial photographs of ships' wakes doing S-curves trying to find a carrier's wake. It's a game we used to play; warfare without electronics. I can only remember one time the Ruskies won the war game; they used almost 20 subs positioned at 14 nm apart so they could get line-of-sight morse on their periscope transmitters. They were able to keep in touch and they just sat there waiting for a carrier to "cruise" by. They radioed us in the night and we had to "roll over and play dead". The next morning the entire ship got to wave at 5 Russian subs and thier crews as they paraded by. Pretty cool day. That would probably make a great movie: All the Stuff No One Knows About dedicated to all the little "games" countries play with taxpayer's dollars (or rubles). Well, enough for now; more on Saturday, no?