This video (about nine minutes long) is highly amusing, at least to most of us veterans. It contains a fair amount of bad language (also familiar to veterans), but if you'll forgive that, I think you'll find it entertaining. The submarine in question was the USS Flying Fish.
I think this encounter with Greenpeace offers an excellent example of what Massad Ayoob calls "a sudden and acute failure of the victim selection process" (by Greenpeace, of course).
Peter
18 comments:
Video should come with a warning label, and a coupon for Depends™: Warning: Watching this may cause you to wet yourself.
Well-played.
Word to your mother: the first guy to do a faithful re-enactment video of this incident goes viral, and becomes an internet legend.
I want a jellyfish cannon. Also wanna see a video of this incident.
Loved the 'Here! Catch!'
One thing they totally missed, possibly because they have not experienced a Red Tide, is the absolute stench involved. I would rather hang out at a sewage treatment plant. On the other hand, if they truly were hippies, they might not notice the smell.
The 'screwdriver' that came up from the Engine Room was probably a deck plate screwdriver 3 feet long that weights a couple pounds. The Omaha had at least one that had been sharpened to an edge, not to mention big combination wrenches.
And yes, submariners DON'T fight fair. :-)
MM1(SS)
I was on a Sub while Greenpeace was doing this stuff. Our Captain's direction was no unauthorized personnel survive setting foot on my boat.
That said, we didn't want them to set foot on the boat. One option was to pressurize the sanitary system and blow the dock side fitting. High pressure wrinkle necked brown trout. Ship's accidently blow their pier side fitting all the time, easy to do on purpose. And yes, we sat around talking about other things we could do. Incidentally, had they gone down the aft engineering hatch they would have been in the engine room of a nuclear ship. for which the navy takes a very dim view.
Squadron tried a boarding exercise and our Trim and Drain system worked fine. T&D supplies fire fighting water in addition to it's regular duties. The duty crew ran the pressure up to max, and before the fire hose ruptured, while spraying, they flipped the zodiac and then played whack a mole with any heads above water. BZ from squadron.
We carried M-16s and M-14's. M-16's for repel boarders and M-14's for polar bears if we had to surface through the ice for some reason.
Those idiots got off lightly. LT(SS)
Going down a ladder blindly into a space full of athletic young men ready, willing, and ordered to hurt any intruders isn't a recipe for a comfortable time. The greenies were lucky they weren't able to try and enter the boat.
I note that the jellyfish puree cannon is lead free and biodegradable so that's nice for the Greenpeace lot, being all environmentally conscious and all that.
Phil B
I was in the USN from 1988-92, when Greenpeace was making a nuisance of itself. We regularly trained to flood out small boat engines with our firehoses off the flight deck (I was a carrier sailor, CV 67, CV 59)
--Tennessee Budd
Oh well done! The only one better that I know of is the French sinking the greenpeace boat.
I was a Pacific Stars & Stripes photojournalist in the 1980s. Choppered out to the USS New Jersey one day and sailed back into port on her. When we got close these nuclear protestors came out in swarms of Zodiacs, and the Japanese military swarmed to drive them off. One Zodiac broke through the cordon, drove for us, looked up...and realized they were pitting their rubber boat against 900-foot, 45,000 ton battleship. And turned around and left.
That must have been a long time ago. Today no Navy boat or ship can afford to let strangers get that close. A zodiac full of hadjis could easily fly a Greenpeace flag while igniting their IED.
Off topic but this just happened...
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg9w4n6gp5o
My cup of morning coffee and this video... what a marvelous way to greet the day! ( USN ET1, radar tech USS Midway CVA-41, 1958/1961. ( Yes, I'll be 86 this coming March 22nd ))
That which does not kill you makes you stronger. Except sailors, they will kill you and sing songs about it! FC1 USN (ret)
CONGRATS! Fighter crew chief '69-'73, A.F.(74).
Oh, yes, the Fat Electrician made a cameo - and said he'd do a video on this! I would absolutely watch him tell this totally hilarious story; he has to be one of the best storytellers I've ever seen. I binged-watched all of his videos over Christmas break. The man has an incredible sense of timing and delivery. If you get the chance, go check out his work. He tells the stories of random people from history - usually military figures, especially those whose stories have been forgotten.
NFO: the French killed a Dutch photographer in a New Zealand port. His name was Fernando Pereira. Married with 2 children. You consider that 'better'?
Post a Comment