The First Navy Jack's Significance

Midweek--Coffee Break
August 21st 2013
 
  Two weeks ago I was privileged to attend the “Change of Command” ceremony  whereby the command of all Pacific submarines “Commander Submarine Force US Pacific Fleet” (COMSUBPAC) transitioned from one Naval Officer to the next. All such Naval ceremonies are steeped in tradition, but this one--held on the deck of the submarine USS Jacksonville--in which one Rear Admiral replaces another Rear Admiral is especially so.
     Because the transition of such great responsibility as a Naval Command is so significant, the change is marked by one specific moment of “relief”. After reading his/her orders from the Washington Bureau of Naval Personnel, the incoming officer smartly salutes the outgoing officer and says in a strong clear voice, “I relieve you, Sir”, whereby the outgoing officer returns the salute and says, “I stand relieved.” (and instantly a ten ton weight of responsibility shifts from the shoulders of one to the other).
     Of course there were congratulatory speeches by three and four star officers, introductions of families--several from afar, and praise for the enllisted COMSUBPAC staff, and the crew of the USS Jacksonville.
     There was, however, a new element on the scene, at least one which I had not seen before. Fixed to the Jacksonville’s deck only a few feet from the dias where the ceremony was taking place, was a sturdy flagpole only 10 feet or so high from which flew the “First Navy Jack”, the red and white striped flag superimposed upon which was a straight rattlesnake in a crawling position beneath which was the bold phrase, “Don’t Tread On Me”.
     This DTOM battle flag was used in 1775 by Commodore Esek Hopkins as his fleet gathered in the Delaware river before engaging the British Navy. This Navy Jack signaled that the entire Fleet was to attack the enemy. In May of 2002 the Secretary of the Navy decreed that this flag would be flown by all US Navy ships for the duration of the war on Global Terrorism...”as an historic reminder of the nation’s and the Navy’s origin, and will to persevere and triumph.”
     Indeed, over the decades prior to and during WWII just the thought of treading on a rattle snake in the American wild was enough to strike fear into the hearts of America’s enemies, and America has always been ready to strike back hard when “Tread” upon; from the Bay of Biscay, to the Spanish Maine to the Barbary Coast. From the American Revolution, to the War of 1812, to the Spanish American War the warning remained clear. Then after Pearl Harbor, from Midway Island, to the skies over the Coral Sea, and ultimately to the two ill fated Japanese cities hit by the first two atom bombs
     Then in the early 50s came the United Nations “police action” in Korea which resulted in a stand off, but we did preserve freedom for the South Korean people. Then after winning the Vietnam war militarily, we surrendered politically, literally inviting Communist North Vietnam to “tread” upon us and our Vietnamese allies. Now we have been in and out of Iraq and almost out of Afghanistan with no one even uttering the word victory. So of the four wars America has fought since WWII, none have resulted in clear cut victories. except for the one “decreed” over al Qaida by our President.
      How many times has our President threatend accountability and punishment for various terrorist crimes against American lives and property?  But except for Bin Laden, they have all been empty threats. Not in my lifetime has our foreign policy been so ineffectual, has our world leadership been so weak, has our influence been so low.
Our Commander in Chief should bone up on the origin of the First Navy Jack, and the actual meaning of “Don’t Tread On Me”.

A True American Patriot, Hero

MidWeek-- Coffee Break
August 5th 2013

As a kid’ I saw Gary Cooper in the movie, Sergeant York, the Tennessee sharpshooter of WWI fame. A Pacifist by nature, he became an unlikely hero  when, nearly single-handedly, he took out several German machine gun nests and captured 132 German soldiers.  According to the film, he picked off 17 of the gunners with his “Turkey Shoot” marksmanship.  Harkening back to the tactics of his youth, he made  turkey sounds (“gobble gobble gobble”).  When the curious German gunners raised their heads to check out the gobbling, he picked them off one by one. 

    Ultimately Sergeant York became one of the most decorated soldiers of WWI with the Congressional Medal of Honor (CMH), The Distinguished Service Cross (the Army’s highest), and the French Croix de Guerre.

    He used the money he made on the movie to start a Bible College.

    WWII’s Audie Murphie, product of a poor, Texas share croppin’ family, conned his way into the Army at age sixteen. From the liberation of Rome in 1944, to the invasion of France on “D-Day”, he was seriously wounded several times, and according to Wikipedia, was “awarded every US Military award for valor available from the US Army”. For his unprecedented heroism in battle--he stood unprotected atop a burning tank destroyer and single-handedly killed 50 enemy soldiers from an advancing German unit--he was awarded his CMH. 

    Perhaps even more significantly, his own post war “battle fatigue” or “shell shock”--the precursors of PTSD--actually drew the first attention to that post-combat syndrome for Korea and Vietnam Vets, and is now a well known reality of modern warfare.

     I am drawn to the stories of York and Murphy because we have just lost another hero, actually a hero’s hero, US Air Force Colonel (Ret.) George “Bud” Day, with whom I spent some intense times in North Vietnam. During a part of our overlapping time in the Hanoi Hilton, I had the privilege and honor to serve under his command in a cell bay of 30 or so men. He was the toughest man I’ll ever know, and because of that, our enemy went to extraordinary lengths just to break him.

    Before Vietnam, Bud had served in WWII as a US Marine in the Pacific theatre, and as an Air Force bomber pilot for two tours in Korea. By the time he retired from active duty, his dedication and bravery--especially in Vietnam--had garnered more than seventy medals and decorations. Second only to General Douglas McArthur (another 3 war warrior), Bud Day was the most highly decorated American Military Officer in modern history. 

     His capture and escape story is legendary. Shot down in an Air Force F-100 Super Sabre over North Vietnam, his arm and one knee were broken, and one eye damaged. Thinking he was hurt too badly to escape, his young guard’s inattention allowed him to escape into the country side. He roamed and evaded recapture near the DMZ for several days, was incapacitated by an exploding bomb or artillery shell, subsisted on berries and frogs, eventually swam across the Ben Hai river (the DMZ) into South Vietnam, and then, within sight of a US Army outpost, was shot in the hand and leg by Viet Cong guerrillas, recaptured, and returned to North Vietnam.

     For this heroic escape attempt and for his subsequent five and a half years of unyielding resistance to communist torture and isolation, and for his enduring inspirational leadership, he was awarded the CMH.

     Not content to rest on his laurels, and using his law degree earned between WWII and Korea, Bud spent his “retirement” years crusading for veteran’s benefits, winning expanded health coverage for Vets over 65.

     Last week in his Senate floor eulogy, John McCain said of our mutual friend; “He was the bravest man I’ve ever known, and his fierce resistance and resolute leadership set an example for all of us how to return home with honor.” 

     I last saw Bud a year ago here at Punch Bowl where the CMH society was dedicating a plaque as a part of it’s annual meeting. During our reunion, it was apparent, at age 87, he still intended to “burn out” going up. Colonel Bud Day...still an inspirational leader worth following.

Pilots Must Be Hands On

 Midweek--Coffee Break
July 22nd, 3013


The worst thing a Navy carrier pilot can do is to land short of the landing area on the flight deck. When that happens the airplane either hits the  deck where it curves down behind the ship (called the ramp), or it misses the flight deck altogether and hits the rear-most part of the ship beneath the ramp called the spud-locker. Either way it can ruin your whole day.

     For that reason, the pilot stays totally focused upon the details of landing aboard the ship safely, ie staying aligned with the centerline of the angled flight deck as the ship moves constantly to the right, flying exactly the right approach speed, and, most importantly, controlling the decreasing altitude to stay exactly on the right glide slope (this is the part that keeps you off the ramp and out of the spud-locker). 

     In the early sixties when I was flying the F-8 Crusader from the USS Saratoga in the Mediterranean Sea, we used an ingeneous landing aid consisting of a large concave mirror mounted on the left side of the flight deck. An amber spot light mounted aft of the mirror shown into the center of the mirror to reflect back up the glide slope for the pilot’s reference. The mirror was flanked on either side by a fixed horizontal row of green datum lights. If the pilot kept the reflection of the orange light (called the “meatball”), in line with the row of green datum lights, he was on the proper glide slope to land on the right spot on the deck where his tailhook would catch the arrestring cables. This glide slope could be adjusted for different aircraft types by changing the tilt of the mirror.

     This concept went through several refinements until the gyro-stabilized Fresnel lens beamed colored lights up the glide slope; green for above glide slope, amber for on glide slope, red for below, and flashing red for dangerously below.

     Ultimately, of course, the Automatic Carrier Landing System was developed whereby the planes flight controls and engine power settings are controlled by radar from the ship. Although touted as a “hands off” system, I never knew a pilot...including myself...who didn’t keep one hand loosely on the control stick and the other loosely on the throttle, ready to override the system instantly.

     All of this is pertinent because we have just witnessed Asiana Airline Flight 214 incur the equivalent of a major ramp strike with the entire tail section (along with two young passengers) ending up in the spud-locker of San Francisco Bay. The NTSB has barely commenced

 it’s investigation, but already, it’s not looking good for the pilots.  The flight control recorder indicated the pilots were using “auto-throttle” to maintain proper approach airspeed, but either it hadn’t been properly engaged or had failed and not noticed until the airspeed had dropped 30 knots below where it was supposed to be, and impact with the ground was immenent.

     A career United pilot who had spent over five years as an instructor pilot for Korean Airlines has suggested there could have also been cultural issues in play in the cockpit whereby a junior instructor pilot may have been reluctant to emphatically correct a more senior “student” pilot. He also personally observed the propensity of the Koreans-as he put it-to become overly dependent upon technology.

     Airline Captain “Sully” Sullenberger, who successfully ditched his bird stricken plane into the Hudson River 5 years ago with virtually no casualties said “Pilots must be engaged, aware, and mentally flying the airplane even when it’s actually being flown by a computer.”

     It is becoming more clear that none of the four Asiana pilots was keeping one hand “loosely on the control stick (yoke) and the other loosely on the throttle.”

Coffee Break

 Midweek--Coffee Break
July 17th 2013


“This is the most transparent Administration in history.”      

                              Barack Obama; White House “Fireside Hangout” hosted on line by Google, February 13th, 2013

    As Saturday Night Live’s would be newscaster, Seth Meyers, would say in reply, “REALLY, Mr. President!”

    One of the most basic tenets of good leadership is maintaining--nay, demanding--timely communications with one’s subordinates up and down the chain of command.

    A good leader will have a well promulgated standing policy in place that his/her subordinates will instantly communicate anything that could possibly bring embarrassment to the organization or to the leader. A good leader should never be surprised.

    That Barack Obama would like Americans to believe he knew nothing about the IRS targeting conservative groups..”I first learned about this from the same news reports that I think most people learned about them”...he simply confirms our growing suspicians that his leadership is seriously lacking, OR that he commands no loyalty from his subordinates, OR that his operating MO is to insure denyability of any wrongdoing, OR that he is simply lying.  Yes, lying, not mis-speaking, not skirting the truth, but flat out lying...like it or not.

    Good leaders meet controversy head on and stay out ahead of it, but Mr. Obama, is in such a state of denial he lies even when the truth would serve him better. He is currently so overwhelmed by scandals on every side to the point of near helplessness, all to the worsening plight of our economy, our foreign policy, our national security, and certainly our confidence in government. As the President himself recently prophisized, “when we lose faith in our government, then we have problems”. REALLY, Mr President!

    The whys and wherefores of the Benghazi tragedy are still the subject of an “ongoing investigation” and cannot be discussed; not even the President’s and Secretary of State’s whereabouts throughout that evening after leaving the White House ops center and her State Dept office respectively early on while our Ambassador and three other Americans were murdered by Islamic terrorists, none of whom have been “brought to justice” as our President promised...but then what’s just another Presidential promise?

    In the meantime the leadership of the Justice Department and the IRS mirror the style of their Supreme Leader, Mr Obama himself. Lois Lerner, who headed the Non Profits division of the IRS which targeted only conservative  groups seeking non profit status refused to testify to a congressional hearing by pleading the Fifth Amendment, a rarely used tactic to avoid incrimination. Her lawyer swears she is innocent of any wrong-doing so one wonders just whom she is protecting.

    Eric Holder, the President’s old Chicago Mafia buddy whom he appointed US Attorney General continues his lying habits to Congress by denying any knowlege of or role in the unconstitutional persecution of Newsman James Rosen, which transcripts show he clearly did. He has previously lied under oath about the DOJ process resulting in not prosecuting Black Panthers for flagrant voter intimidation in the election of 2008. He also denyed any knowlege of the ill fated “Fast and Furious” DOJ program shipping guns to Mexico hoping to follow their trail to Cartel kingpins. DOJ records revealed Holder did in fact know of the program. One of the guns was traced to the incident in which Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed.

    Our President is currently watching the riots in Turkey directed against Prime Minister Erdogan who is inexorably (like a frog in gradually boiling water) leading his country (and our NATO ally) toward a more rigid form of anti American Islam. Yet he continues to praise Erdogan as “one of America’s closest friends”. Sayonara Egypt...and soon Turkey. Great foreign policy!

    And in the background of all this is the continuing saga of the Fort Hood terrorist attack (since 2009) by Major Nidal Hasan, who says he was acting in defense of the Taliban. Yet Obama, in deference to his affinity for Islam, continues to call it “workplace violence”, and refuses to put a stop to Hasan’s Army pay, by now in the hundreds of thousands. Must be of great comfort to the families and friends of the 13 innocents slaughtered by Hasan.

    We have a “Leader” who refuses to hold anyone accountable for anything...including himself.