Kids These Days

 

Posted by lex, on December 26th, 2011

From the 2011 Strike Fighter Ball on the east coast.

1. It’s still a little strange for me to see the liveries of Tomcat squadrons on Super Hornets.
2. I know how effective The Helmet can be in close. It still looks goofy.
3. The NCEA for flares appears to have changed, since I was in. As has the taste in music.
4. Good on yez.

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This, I Don’t Get

By lex, on December 14th, 2011

Richard Somers was appointed a midshipman in April, 1797. He served on the USS United States in the Quasi-War in France, and captained the Nautilus in the Med, subsequently leading a division of gunboats that repeatedly attacked Tripoli. The Tripolitan corsairs had captured the nation’s attention during the Barbary Wars, and eventually Somers – serving under Stephen Decatur – volunteered to command the fire ship Intrepid, destined for the pirate fleet hard by a fortress in Tripoli.  In an inherently hazardous mission, Somers and his crew of twelve volunteers died when their ship exploded prematurely. Their bodies floated ashore, were feasted on by dogs and dragged through the streets. They lie now in an ill-kept mass grave in the Libyan capital. A capital, which – for the first time in decades – is well-disposed to the United States.

Their families want to bring their remains home, but Navy is fighting the effort. *

This, I don’t get.

** 06-16-18 –  Link gone; no replacement found – Ed.

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Neptunus Lex: Stories and Essays of the Navy

To the readers: I am in the process of organization by category many of Lex’s posts – this is a page that will be linked from the “master page”. I have found, in trying to organize these by subject, that one page is just too big.

Bill

10-12-2003     The Hive

10-13-2003     Going Fast, Stopping In A Hurry

10-23-2003     Homecoming 2003 – The End Of A War Cruise

11-26-2003     The Unbearable Lightness Of Paddles

01-15-2004     Colors On The Stennis

01-17-2004     Port Visits – Perth

02-02-2004    Teamwork

03-04-2004    Flying With Your Feet On Non Skid

03-21-2004     A Dry Navy

04-11-2004     On The Value Of Sleep

05-14-2004    Callsigns

05-22-2004    Port Visit Karachi Pakistan

06-04-2004   Youngster Cruise

10-13-2004     Living Overseas

10-18-2004     Working Your Hardest

12-21-2004     The Empty Chair

01-08-2005    Navy Showers And The Steam Cycle

01-10-2005     Message To Garcia

01-13-2005     The Separation Thing

02-19-2005    Iwo Jima

06-01-2005     Wacko

01-21-2006    Things you’ve never seen…

07-13-2006     Things you forget about, when you haven’t

08-11-2006     Night Bounce

12-07-2006      Pearl Harbor

03-01-2007     Time to get up

04-23-2007     Service Etiquette

06-06-2007    Lost Opportunities

07-27-2007    That “resilient” threat

12-07-2006      Pearl Harbor

03-01-2007     Time to get up

03-05-2007     This Better be Good 

04-23-2007     Service Etiquette

06-06-2007    Lost Opportunities

01-19-2008     The Captain’s Log

03-01-2008    An Old Letter

07-19-2008    Mere Chance

09-06-2008   Postcards From The Hedge

05-21-2009    Survivor’s Guilt

06-08-2009   Mah Brutha Beef

07-14-2009     Data Flows

09-03-2009     Icarus

08-11-2010      Sacred Oak

08-06-2011     I’ve Met Them

11-30-2011      Fallon Squiblets

12-07-2011      Pearl Harbor Day

03-03-2012     Early Go

Neptunus Lex: Some Recommended Posts By Category

Please note: This is still a work in progress. I am not finished with all of the categories. I have noticed too that in most of the post links, it does not open a second window, so I will have a bit of work to do 😉 

As I am about to finish reposting Lex’s posts, I thought it would be nice to offer some recommended reading by category. Lex had a lot of interesting posts – some humorous, some instructional….Some about life. I am sure that as I read through these I will pick some more categories. 

This is by no means a “definitive list” – I will probably have 1,500 or more posts by the time I am done, but it is a start. And I am certainly not the arbitrator of what should be here; if you have some favorites please let me know! 

I am just going down the Best Of Index…

BB

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Stories & Essays of the Navy

 

 Leadership

 

Naval Aviation and Safety

 

Humor

 

 

 

 

In Naval Aviation, the Past is Not Dead

By lex, on December 5, 2008

 

It’s not even past, at NAS Kingsville, Texas:

The Morale, Welfare and Recreation Department unveiled their latest “toy” for base personnel Friday, Oct. 31 in the form of a mechanical device designed to simulate catching a wire on an aircraft carrier. The “Kingsville Catapult” or “King Kat” as it is called, was designed and built by VT-21 Training Officer LT Casey Bates. The project took three months to complete from design to test drive, and included the volunteer efforts of several other aviators, dubbed the King Kat air crew.

The design was borrowed from the “Cubi Cat” at NAS Cubi Point in Olongapo, PI.

The Influence of Seapower

Posted by lex, on July 11th, 2011

Writing in the WSJ, former SecNav Gordon England joins former CNO Vern Clark and former Marine Corps Commandant James L. Jones to channel their inner Alfred Thayer Mahan:

The wreck of the Exeter

Posted by lex, on May 18, 2008

 

The Java Sea yields up one of its more famous ghosts:

The cruiser HMS Exeter, best known for its valiant role in the Battle of the River Plate when it hunted down the pride of the German navy, the Admiral Graf Spee, was located by divers searching the Java Sea.

The British vessel was sunk on March 1, 1942, when, with two escorts, the destroyer HMS Encounter and the American destroyer Pope, it was intercepted by nine Japanese warships.

All three Allied ships were lost in the action. The wreck of Encounter, which had passed up a chance to escape by turning back in a brave but futile attempt to protect Exeter, has also now been located…