Cold Warriors

[Eric]

[janice6]

6 minutes ago, Eric said:

It took a number of avionics computers to make that a reliable reality in the B-2.

[Eric]

6 minutes ago, janice6 said:

It took a number of avionics computers to make that a reliable reality in the B-2.

Yeah, I understand this aircraft had a bad habit of porpoising.

[SC Tiger]

14 hours ago, tous said:

The YB-35 was a piston-engined version of Jack Northop's vision.

The YB-49 was a jet-engined version of essentially the same aircraft.

Both were produced as flying prototypes.

Yes, they flew.

 

The Horton He 229 was the first practical flying wing design in the late 1930s, though it was never produced.

 

Jack Northrop is right up there with Kelly Johnson when it came to innovative, bold aircraft design.

Northrop just didn't have the technology needed to make the YB-35 or YB-49 successful, but Northrop Aviation made the B-2, a direct descendant of the YB-35 and YB-49.

A shame that Jack Northrop didn't live to see it

I think he did - sort of.  He saw a scale model of it.  Even when it was still top secret.

The B2 is the exact width of the old flying wings that Northrop designed.  When he saw the B2 model, per the project designer John Cashen:

'"Northrop reportedly wrote on a sheet of paper "Now I know why God has kept me alive for 25 years". '

[SC Tiger]

8 hours ago, Eric said:

Yeah, I understand this aircraft had a bad habit of porpoising.

What's the big deal?  The Air Force reporpoises things all the time.  At least according to my neighbor from New Yawk. 

[Dric902]

 

[Eric]

6 minutes ago, Dric902 said:

 

That gun team is part of Hotel Company, 3rd Inf Reg, The Old Guard. I heard them fire many, many times, both in practice and during ceremonies. All of their deuce-and-a-halfs, CUCVs and guns were painted gloss black. 

Hotel company contained all the miscellaneous units in TOG. The Caisson Platoon, The Gun platoon, The Fife & Drum Corps, The Recon Platoon, plus several others are all in Hotel Company. When I was in TOG, Hotel Company was in the building beside my company area. A bud I went to Basic with was in the Caisson Platoon. I never saw anyone in the Army who enjoyed his job more. He loved that unit. 

[Dric902]

1 hour ago, Eric said:

That gun team is part of Hotel Company, 3rd Inf Reg, The Old Guard. I heard them fire many, many times, both in practice and during ceremonies. All of their deuce-and-a-halfs, CUCVs and guns were painted gloss black. 

Hotel company contained all the miscellaneous units in TOG. The Caisson Platoon, The Gun platoon, The Fife & Drum Corps, The Recon Platoon, plus several others are all in Hotel Company. When I was in TOG, Hotel Company was in the building beside my company area. A bud I went to Basic with was in the Caisson Platoon. I never saw anyone in the Army who enjoyed his job more. He loved that unit. 

An old friend of mine was TOG doing funerals. Til he got approved for Tomb Guard duty.

he always said

”ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

drop this ****** and get on the bus”

they did did a lot of funerals and were always short handed

 

I saw the Fife and Drum Corp once, a whole new manual of D&C..

.

[Dric902]

Here’s some stuff for tous...

Odd little ‘facts’…

-Nimitz class aircraft carriers get refuelled approximately every 20-25 years. Since the lifespan of an aircraft carrier is about 50 years, that means they only get refuelled once. (This is the nuclear fuel for the reactors – the ship gets jet fuel every few days.)

-Almost all of the food has to be manually carried down to the mess and storage decks. This is a constant painstaking feat considering you’re feeding almost 6000 people, and you’re dealing with anywhere from about 4-8 stories worth of stairs, which can take as much as 10 hours in one resupply.

-All USN Aircraft Carriers are powered by steam from the nuclear plants.

-Machinery and non-airwing personnel can go longer than many submariners without seeing the sun. Many go 90-120+ days straight.

-The screws (propellers) installed on the USS Dwight D Eisenhower weight 366,200lbs (166,105kg) each and there are four of them.

-The Screws are each 25 feet tall.

-In even remotely rough seas, the showers alternate between hot and cold with the rocking of the ship. This is hilarious if you’re just using the bathroom, it’s horrible if you’re the one taking the shower.

-The total anchor weight including 1,082 feet of chain for one (of two anchors) is 735,000 lbs. (333,390kg).

-The machinery spaces are so far below the flight and hanger decks, there are emergency crews trained in mountain rescue, called deep rescue crews. They’re trained to rescue personnel out of the escape shafts which are roughly 80ft tall.

-The total number of crew members including the deployed air wing is over 6,000 personnel.

-Nimitz and later class nuclear carriers have 2 dump-truck size nuclear reactors for power. The one Enterprise class carrier has basically 8 submarine-size nuclear reactors powering it. That may seem trivial, but 8 nuclear reactors on a floating ship, each with essentially independent systems for control and safety, is nothing short of insanity.

-The height of the keel to the mast is the equivalent to a 24-story building.

-The Flight Deck is 4.5 acres.

-Steam piping in the machinery spaces is so hot, it will kill nerve cells before someone realises they touched the wrong thing.

-You can water ski behind an aircraft carrier going full speed, not that it’s safe.

-Aircraft carriers don’t have sonar – the carriers are too noisy for it to be effective. (In truth, they do have sonar depth finders, but those point straight down and are only used when you’re fairly close to shore.)

-Additionally, there’s very little shielding from radiation on the underside of a carrier since it’s usually facing the entire ocean, so a person must be certified and wear a radiation monitoring device to be under the ship in dry dock.

-The USS Midway (obviously a retired carrier) has about 5,000 miles (8046 kilometres) of wiring. A modern carrier, despite having much more electronic equipment, has only about half as much wiring because much of the data is now transported by fibreoptics.

-When the engines are engaged, the shafts rotate/twist more than an entire revolution before the propeller/screw actually moves.

-Nuclear operators on carriers, and submarines and formerly cruisers for that matter, receive much less radiation than normal citizens. You get more radiation commuting to work than the people running nuclear reactors. (Chernobyl, 3 mile island, Fukushima, SL1, and some others notwithstanding)

-Many of the dining tables in the enlisted mess can be converted to hospital beds and even surgical tables in the event of mass casualties.

-Thanks to a sophisticated network of supply ships, fresh milk and soft-serve ice cream is almost always available.

-When resupplying the ship, they actually use a gun with a rope attached to it, to initially retrieve the cables from the supply ships. Just picture cruising at 20 knots with a sailor literally shooting a gun at a supply ship from the hanger deck.

-There are small ramps around the edge of the flight deck, each about 18 inches wide or so, that lead out over the water. These are “bomb chutes,” and provide a way to quickly get bombs and other aircraft weapons over the side and away from the ship in case there’s a fire.

-Any time weapons are brought up from or taken down to the magazines, it always requires two elevators to accomplish. They’re taken about half the way, at which point they have to switch elevators since none of them go the whole distance. This is to eliminate one potential path of escape for any fire or explosion that might break out. It’s not at all uncommon to be eating a meal on the mess decks, with a cart full of bombs or missiles sitting a few feet away as they’re waiting to complete their journey up or down.

-Procedures have been developed and are sometimes practiced that allows for the launching and recovery of aircraft without the use of radios – no speaking whatsoever. It’s called “zip lip.” This is done when the ship is in EMCON condition, or “emissions control,” when radio-based equipment like radar and radios aren’t used in an effort to remain “silent” to enemies that might use the signals to detect the ship.

-There has never been a nuclear accident or uncontrolled release of radioactivity in the history of Naval Nuclear power, including submarines.

-The stern area of the ship at the hangar deck level is home to what’s called the “jet shop.” This is where in-depth repairs are made to jet engines that have been removed from airplanes. That area has jet fuel plumbing so that the engines can be tested at high power while attached (strongly) to the ship.

-It takes more than 2000 people to spell out “Ready Now” or a similarly large phrase on the flight deck.

-Every carrier landing is recorded on video, and each pilot is graded on how well they did. The best you can do is an OK-3wire, which means both the plane and pilot can be used again.

-During daytime and in good weather, during an aircraft recover (landing) cycle, the goal is to have an airplane land every 45 seconds. That means each one should land, come to a stop, get free of the cable it caught and taxi out of the way in 45 seconds or less.

-A deployment is referred to as a cruise by recruiters.

-The actual speeds for a carrier are classified.

 

[janice6]

30 minutes ago, Dric902 said:

Here’s some stuff for tous...

Odd little ‘facts’…

-Nimitz class aircraft carriers get refuelled approximately every 20-25 years. Since the lifespan of an aircraft carrier is about 50 years, that means they only get refuelled once. (This is the nuclear fuel for the reactors – the ship gets jet fuel every few days.)

-Almost all of the food has to be manually carried down to the mess and storage decks. This is a constant painstaking feat considering you’re feeding almost 6000 people, and you’re dealing with anywhere from about 4-8 stories worth of stairs, which can take as much as 10 hours in one resupply.

-All USN Aircraft Carriers are powered by steam from the nuclear plants.

-Machinery and non-airwing personnel can go longer than many submariners without seeing the sun. Many go 90-120+ days straight.

-The screws (propellers) installed on the USS Dwight D Eisenhower weight 366,200lbs (166,105kg) each and there are four of them.

-The Screws are each 25 feet tall.

-In even remotely rough seas, the showers alternate between hot and cold with the rocking of the ship. This is hilarious if you’re just using the bathroom, it’s horrible if you’re the one taking the shower. (1)

-The total anchor weight including 1,082 feet of chain for one (of two anchors) is 735,000 lbs. (333,390kg).

-The machinery spaces are so far below the flight and hanger decks, there are emergency crews trained in mountain rescue, called deep rescue crews. They’re trained to rescue personnel out of the escape shafts which are roughly 80ft tall.

-The total number of crew members including the deployed air wing is over 6,000 personnel.

-Nimitz and later class nuclear carriers have 2 dump-truck size nuclear reactors for power. The one Enterprise class carrier has basically 8 submarine-size nuclear reactors powering it. That may seem trivial, but 8 nuclear reactors on a floating ship, each with essentially independent systems for control and safety, is nothing short of insanity.

-The height of the keel to the mast is the equivalent to a 24-story building.

-The Flight Deck is 4.5 acres.

-Steam piping in the machinery spaces is so hot, it will kill nerve cells before someone realises they touched the wrong thing.

-You can water ski behind an aircraft carrier going full speed, not that it’s safe.

-Aircraft carriers don’t have sonar – the carriers are too noisy for it to be effective. (In truth, they do have sonar depth finders, but those point straight down and are only used when you’re fairly close to shore.)

-Additionally, there’s very little shielding from radiation on the underside of a carrier since it’s usually facing the entire ocean, so a person must be certified and wear a radiation monitoring device to be under the ship in dry dock.

-The USS Midway (obviously a retired carrier) has about 5,000 miles (8046 kilometres) of wiring. A modern carrier, despite having much more electronic equipment, has only about half as much wiring because much of the data is now transported by fibreoptics.

-When the engines are engaged, the shafts rotate/twist more than an entire revolution before the propeller/screw actually moves.

-Nuclear operators on carriers, and submarines and formerly cruisers for that matter, receive much less radiation than normal citizens. You get more radiation commuting to work than the people running nuclear reactors. (Chernobyl, 3 mile island, Fukushima, SL1, and some others notwithstanding)

-Many of the dining tables in the enlisted mess can be converted to hospital beds and even surgical tables in the event of mass casualties.  (2)

-Thanks to a sophisticated network of supply ships, fresh milk and soft-serve ice cream is almost always available. (3)

-When resupplying the ship, they actually use a gun with a rope attached to it, to initially retrieve the cables from the supply ships. Just picture cruising at 20 knots with a sailor literally shooting a gun at a supply ship from the hanger deck.  (4)

-There are small ramps around the edge of the flight deck, each about 18 inches wide or so, that lead out over the water. These are “bomb chutes,” and provide a way to quickly get bombs and other aircraft weapons over the side and away from the ship in case there’s a fire.

-Any time weapons are brought up from or taken down to the magazines, it always requires two elevators to accomplish. They’re taken about half the way, at which point they have to switch elevators since none of them go the whole distance. This is to eliminate one potential path of escape for any fire or explosion that might break out. It’s not at all uncommon to be eating a meal on the mess decks, with a cart full of bombs or missiles sitting a few feet away as they’re waiting to complete their journey up or down.

-Procedures have been developed and are sometimes practiced that allows for the launching and recovery of aircraft without the use of radios – no speaking whatsoever. It’s called “zip lip.” This is done when the ship is in EMCON condition, or “emissions control,” when radio-based equipment like radar and radios aren’t used in an effort to remain “silent” to enemies that might use the signals to detect the ship. (5)

-There has never been a nuclear accident or uncontrolled release of radioactivity in the history of Naval Nuclear power, including submarines.

-The stern area of the ship at the hangar deck level is home to what’s called the “jet shop.” This is where in-depth repairs are made to jet engines that have been removed from airplanes. That area has jet fuel plumbing so that the engines can be tested at high power while attached (strongly) to the ship.

-It takes more than 2000 people to spell out “Ready Now” or a similarly large phrase on the flight deck.

-Every carrier landing is recorded on video, and each pilot is graded on how well they did. The best you can do is an OK-3wire, which means both the plane and pilot can be used again.

-During daytime and in good weather, during an aircraft recover (landing) cycle, the goal is to have an airplane land every 45 seconds. That means each one should land, come to a stop, get free of the cable it caught and taxi out of the way in 45 seconds or less.

-A deployment is referred to as a cruise by recruiters.

-The actual speeds for a carrier are classified.  (6)

 

The Minesweeper I was on was TINY compared to a Carrier.  As an example of how small we were, one of the ships in our squadron (5 Ships total) was docking in Jacksonville and cut too close to the carrier, and the overhang of the flight deck wiped the radar antenna off the top of their mast.

Some "fun" comparisons:

1)  Our "Bathroom facilities", called "the Head"  Was oriented so that a trough connected all toilets together.  The trough was perpendicular to the keel, as a result, when the ship rolled (all the time)  the toilet water in the collection trough would slosh back and forth under all the toilets.

When the weather was rough and someone was on the toilet, you wadded up a bunch of toilet paper and set fire to it, then dropped it into the trough.  It would slosh down the trough and "singe" the guy sitting on the toilet.  You didn't have to be too fast to get away since the injured party was at a disadvantage.

2)   I had 23 stitches in my face while laying on a mess hall table.  Yes, it was the Corpsman's operating facility.

3)  We were so small that when crossing the Atlantic it took us 3 weeks.  Long enough that we ran out of fresh water and had distilled water only for cooking.  We washed ourselves and our clothes in Salt Water.  It's like wearing sand paper.

4) We had a "Dependents Cruise" one day each year where you family could come aboard ship for the day.  We demonstrated a "ship to ship" transfer that day.  Two Minesweepers in a parallel course got up to speed and one veered towards the other.  We got so close to the other ship that a guy simply stepped across to the other ship.  My Captain got a tongue lashing from the Squadron Commander for that unorthodox maneuver.

5) A Navy program my company won, was to develop a means of communications/automated landing system, between a Carrier Pilot and the Carrier, when in enemy waters, at night, with ship and A/C both Blacked out.  The security had to be 100% assuming the enemy was listening and positioned between the Carrier and the A/C that was landing.  We demonstrated the system.

6)  Our flank speed (max possible) was 15 knots.

 

[Eric]

1 hour ago, Dric902 said:

An old friend of mine was TOG doing funerals. Til he got approved for Tomb Guard duty.

he always said

”ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

drop this ****er and get on the bus”

they did did a lot of funerals and were always short handed

 

I saw the Fife and Drum Corp once, a whole new manual of D&C..

.

I was in Delta Company. I did hundreds of funerals. I was on a firing party. I was too short to be a tomb guard or to join the drill team. I am 5’10” and I was tied with several other guys for the honor of being the shortest guy in the company. 5’10” was the minimum height allowed to be in TOG.

That motto still existed when I was in TOG.  We did a wide variety of ceremonies, in addition to the funerals. We were a light infantry unit and we spent a lot of time in the field. The Old Guard also had a company on alert, in case of civil unrest, disaster or a threat. So, we did an alert week every five weeks as well. We had pretty full schedules. It was interesting duty. 

[tous]

Eric, thank you for your service laying our brothers and sisters to rest.

[Nestor]

[willie-pete]

 

[SC Tiger]

14 hours ago, Dric902 said:

Here’s some stuff for tous...

Odd little ‘facts’…

-Nimitz class aircraft carriers get refuelled approximately every 20-25 years. Since the lifespan of an aircraft carrier is about 50 years, that means they only get refuelled once. (This is the nuclear fuel for the reactors – the ship gets jet fuel every few days.)

-Almost all of the food has to be manually carried down to the mess and storage decks. This is a constant painstaking feat considering you’re feeding almost 6000 people, and you’re dealing with anywhere from about 4-8 stories worth of stairs, which can take as much as 10 hours in one resupply.

-All USN Aircraft Carriers are powered by steam from the nuclear plants.

-Machinery and non-airwing personnel can go longer than many submariners without seeing the sun. Many go 90-120+ days straight.

-The screws (propellers) installed on the USS Dwight D Eisenhower weight 366,200lbs (166,105kg) each and there are four of them.

-The Screws are each 25 feet tall.

-In even remotely rough seas, the showers alternate between hot and cold with the rocking of the ship. This is hilarious if you’re just using the bathroom, it’s horrible if you’re the one taking the shower.

-The total anchor weight including 1,082 feet of chain for one (of two anchors) is 735,000 lbs. (333,390kg).

-The machinery spaces are so far below the flight and hanger decks, there are emergency crews trained in mountain rescue, called deep rescue crews. They’re trained to rescue personnel out of the escape shafts which are roughly 80ft tall.

-The total number of crew members including the deployed air wing is over 6,000 personnel.

-Nimitz and later class nuclear carriers have 2 dump-truck size nuclear reactors for power. The one Enterprise class carrier has basically 8 submarine-size nuclear reactors powering it. That may seem trivial, but 8 nuclear reactors on a floating ship, each with essentially independent systems for control and safety, is nothing short of insanity.

-The height of the keel to the mast is the equivalent to a 24-story building.

-The Flight Deck is 4.5 acres.

-Steam piping in the machinery spaces is so hot, it will kill nerve cells before someone realises they touched the wrong thing.

-You can water ski behind an aircraft carrier going full speed, not that it’s safe.

-Aircraft carriers don’t have sonar – the carriers are too noisy for it to be effective. (In truth, they do have sonar depth finders, but those point straight down and are only used when you’re fairly close to shore.)

-Additionally, there’s very little shielding from radiation on the underside of a carrier since it’s usually facing the entire ocean, so a person must be certified and wear a radiation monitoring device to be under the ship in dry dock.

-The USS Midway (obviously a retired carrier) has about 5,000 miles (8046 kilometres) of wiring. A modern carrier, despite having much more electronic equipment, has only about half as much wiring because much of the data is now transported by fibreoptics.

-When the engines are engaged, the shafts rotate/twist more than an entire revolution before the propeller/screw actually moves.

-Nuclear operators on carriers, and submarines and formerly cruisers for that matter, receive much less radiation than normal citizens. You get more radiation commuting to work than the people running nuclear reactors. (Chernobyl, 3 mile island, Fukushima, SL1, and some others notwithstanding)

-Many of the dining tables in the enlisted mess can be converted to hospital beds and even surgical tables in the event of mass casualties.

-Thanks to a sophisticated network of supply ships, fresh milk and soft-serve ice cream is almost always available.

-When resupplying the ship, they actually use a gun with a rope attached to it, to initially retrieve the cables from the supply ships. Just picture cruising at 20 knots with a sailor literally shooting a gun at a supply ship from the hanger deck.

-There are small ramps around the edge of the flight deck, each about 18 inches wide or so, that lead out over the water. These are “bomb chutes,” and provide a way to quickly get bombs and other aircraft weapons over the side and away from the ship in case there’s a fire.

-Any time weapons are brought up from or taken down to the magazines, it always requires two elevators to accomplish. They’re taken about half the way, at which point they have to switch elevators since none of them go the whole distance. This is to eliminate one potential path of escape for any fire or explosion that might break out. It’s not at all uncommon to be eating a meal on the mess decks, with a cart full of bombs or missiles sitting a few feet away as they’re waiting to complete their journey up or down.

-Procedures have been developed and are sometimes practiced that allows for the launching and recovery of aircraft without the use of radios – no speaking whatsoever. It’s called “zip lip.” This is done when the ship is in EMCON condition, or “emissions control,” when radio-based equipment like radar and radios aren’t used in an effort to remain “silent” to enemies that might use the signals to detect the ship.

-There has never been a nuclear accident or uncontrolled release of radioactivity in the history of Naval Nuclear power, including submarines.

-The stern area of the ship at the hangar deck level is home to what’s called the “jet shop.” This is where in-depth repairs are made to jet engines that have been removed from airplanes. That area has jet fuel plumbing so that the engines can be tested at high power while attached (strongly) to the ship.

-It takes more than 2000 people to spell out “Ready Now” or a similarly large phrase on the flight deck.

-Every carrier landing is recorded on video, and each pilot is graded on how well they did. The best you can do is an OK-3wire, which means both the plane and pilot can be used again.

-During daytime and in good weather, during an aircraft recover (landing) cycle, the goal is to have an airplane land every 45 seconds. That means each one should land, come to a stop, get free of the cable it caught and taxi out of the way in 45 seconds or less.

-A deployment is referred to as a cruise by recruiters.

-The actual speeds for a carrier are classified.

 

One thing I was told is that a Ticonderoga-class Cruiser actually carries more firepower than the carrier.  But the carrier can truck it just about anywhere via aircraft.

I assume that supplies to support ships can be flown to the carrier and then dispersed out if needed. 

[tous]

Contemporary cruisers have a much different role on the battlefield than an aircraft carrier, so, yes, they have different shooty stuff.

Supplies can be delivered to any ship via vertical replenishment, or VERTREP.

You hook big bags of stuff to the bottom of a helo and fly them over to the other ship and gently plop them on the deck.

Good thing to do if stuff fits in a bag.

Not really very efficient if the stuff is liquid, such as fuel or big, such as a jet engine or two.

 

They wouldn't let me anywhere near the CVs. 

 

And that gets me to thinking, I wonder what the Reynolds number is for a CV at flank speed?

Lemme get my slide rule out here.

 

Just an interesting note:  The C in CV, CVN, CVA is actually the designation for Cruiser.  The explanation is that aircraft carriers were originally cruisers that they just put a flat deck on, though the USS Langley, CV-1, was originally a collier.

Who ever said it all had to make sense?

 

Edited August 17, 2018 by tous

[SC Tiger]

30 minutes ago, tous said:

Contemporary cruisers have a much different role on the battlefield than an aircraft carrier, so, yes, they have different shooty stuff.

Supplies can be delivered to any ship via vertical replenishment, or VERTREP.

You hook big bags of stuff to the bottom of a helo and fly them over to the other ship and gently plop them on the deck.

Good thing to do if stuff fits in a bag.

Not really very efficient if the stuff is liquid, such as fuel or big, such as a jet engine or two.

 

They wouldn't let me anywhere near the CVs. 

 

And that gets me to thinking, I wonder what the Reynolds number is for a CV at flank speed?

Lemme get my slide rule out here.

 

Just an interesting note:  The C in CV, CVN, CVA is actually the designation for Cruiser.  The explanation is that aircraft carriers were originally cruisers that they just put a flat deck on, though the USS Langley, CV-1, was originally a collier.

Who ever said it all had to make sense?

 

Something else interesting I was told is that while the carrier has a radar set, it doesn't use it very much if at all.  The support ships handle that.  

[tous]

Aircraft carriers have several RADAR sets and yes, they use it all of the time.

What is RADAR good for if you're an aircraft carrier?

Like civilian ATC, you can keep track of your aircraft.

Like civilian weather bureaus, you can keep track of the weather.

Like a civilian vessel at sea, you can keep track of the stuff around you.

 

Where warships differ is that RADAR is also used to search for bad guys and then target bad guys.

Though it is the screening elements of the task group to keep the other guy's explody stuff away, modern CVNs aren't defenseless.  They have air defense missilery as well as jammers and decoys should bad stuff get through the screen.

[willie-pete]

2 hours ago, tous said:

 

Just an interesting note:  The C in CV, CVN, CVA is actually the designation for Cruiser.  The explanation is that aircraft carriers were originally cruisers that they just put a flat deck on, though the USS Langley, CV-1, was originally a collier.

Who ever said it all had to make sense?

 

 Are you saying aircraft carriers used to be rolling coal?   

 

 

[Cubdriver]

1 hour ago, willie-pete said:

 Are you saying aircraft carriers used to be rolling coal?   

 

 

The very first one started life as the USS Jupiter AC-3

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Langley_(CV-1)

And I still think it's a crime that the original Saratoga and the Big E couldn't have been preserved as museum ships.  They didn't deserve their fates after surviving the entire war.

-Pat

[willie-pete]

Acceptance trials.

 

[willie-pete]

He needs to keep his finger off that trigger specifically.

 

 

 

 

[Eric]

[Eric]

[Eric]