Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier
"Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas
"Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex
While the Etendard is admittedly an ungainly looking bird, the Rafale is gorgeous. From how the pilot put his hands up on the “dashboard” it appears to have auto-launch ala Hornet as well.
Do US Navy jets hit the deck that nose-high too?
Lex –
what’s your take on the Rafael vs the Super Hornet?
how much longer do you think those Etendards will be around?
a nuke-powered carrier is a power projection tool. who are they trying to impress?
Seeing a Hawkeye launch is always cool-even on a French ship.
Look at the bright side, after the recovery those French pilots can have a beer! And if my experience on Foch is any indicator some really good bread and food.
Too bad they don’t have their Crusaders any more……….
I think DeGaulle is actually on her way to do a stint in the Gulf if memory serves.
Where’d they steal the important music from … the Crimson Tide soundtrack?
The “important music” is indeed from the Crimson Tide soundtrack.
All that fuss for a wine run to the beach?
Ya know, you strike down those funny looking birds, keep the Frisbee, and replace them with Hornets, that flight deck looked a lot like one of ours. Jerseys, cranials, the ballet…with the exception of thsoe silly little flags. Our guys (as Nose pointed out so well) are quite competent with their hands. One would have thought the French would be masters of that.
Oh, could have sworn I saw Nose holding the pickle, waving them in…
Nose always was a closet Frenchman………..
This gives me an idea for a flight deck post….
Hope y’all realize that it is the Important Music, nay, Very Important Music that makes all the difference. Just think of what those stirring melodies could do for the real Rhythms, Lex.
BTW, far be it from me to belabour a point but….did you ever write that epilogue? I can just about make out the stirring strains from here….. and admittedly, I am a long ways away.
Dunno if you feel similarly: the kids on the roof look like they’ve been on a 12 month deployment with round the clock flight ops without any liberty. Most were dragging there @$$e$ across the deck and none had any beef on them.
How do the enlisted of France stack up to ours? Considering the many French with whom I have worked, I doubt they are from too high a stratum.
The vid with its Very Important Music did not paint a very favorable picture of their force projection capability. Mebbe I’m wrong, but ouside the Rafale, there was little for them to raise their Blue, White and Red.
Nice big roof. Wonder where all the aircraft are. Must not be enough time in a 35 hour work week to launch, recover, maintain, plane wash more than those few shown.
I was taken with the flags too.
Nice little flags, those…
Flags! I said Flags!
Whew almost dropped the “L.”
Don’t Coulter me, Lex. I want to keep hanging around your ready room.
Maybe it’s not PC to call them “Shooters” on a FN ship. Maybe they call them “flaggers” instead.
Do they keep white flags in Pri Fly? Never know when le’ Hawkeye might spot a German ship over the horizon.
SJbill,
I’d be careful about slandering the frog troops. My brief period on one of their carriers says just the opposite about them. They are very professional-albeit they do some things differently than we do.
What the French did, on the 3 French ships that I have ridden on, is treat their enlisted better than we do. From food to berthing. Then again they don’t go out for as long as we did.
Also, during the first gulf war, the French rotated people out leaving the ship on station while cycling people out in 4 month rotations.
Plus the French have had a long history of hosting US Navy exchange pilots-who immediately become designated night players because their number of night traps far exceeds that of the French pilots………
Ditto on what Skippy said about the French military. Can’t speak to the Navy. My stint in the Balkans a couple of years back exposed me to their Army and my impressions were all pretty positive, especially when my KFOR badge got me into their PX.
“run of the mill, garden variety, seen-one-seen-?
“run of the mill, garden variety, seen-one-seen-’em-all Hawkeye type aircraft”
Sounds like sour grapes to me…
Do I ever demean your steed?
(Don’t answer that!)
N
No slander intended – just an observation from biased eyes. This was a promo vid and I expected some swagger and spark when you put most kids in front of a camera – not apparent drudgery.
Doesn’t loook like the Foch scenes in (was it the Godzilla remake?) movies when our military was made to look like buffoons.
Hey here’s a question. Did you notice that on the French Carriers the Island is a lot farther forward than on US versions? And CVN-78 proposes to bring the island even further back towards the stern. It would seem to me that the French may have this one right, it would be easier to drive the ship being able to see the bow…….
SJS could probably answer this better than I.
To be perfectly franc…to me this video was a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing… a PR photo-op BS shoot for the home folks. Best
still and all, ya gotta admit those cute little shooter flags are pretty froggy looking…
Looks like ya’ll made this old white hat’s point about a 35 hour work week with those comments about how good they treat their enlisteds. Oh, and sorry your sense of humor has gone missing. Hope it turns up soon. ;^)
Guess maybe I’ll go off my New Year’s diet and have some Freedom Fries today.
cheers,
dw
Skippy–from the Kittyhawk class to present, super structure was moved back. I don’t know either, but my guess is, it facilitates flight ops/aircraft handling, I’ve wondered my self. I’m sure the braintrust that hangs out here will have an interesting answer.
The Indy had two elevators aft of the island and one forward, with the net result that the island structure itself was further forward than on the Kitty Hawk and Nimitz class.
It also resulted in the burble happening much closer to the fantail on approach, which resulted in a lot of folks transitioning from Connie to Indy to catch early wires during day CQ and flying some hair-raising wave-offs in night CQ, at least until we all got used to it.
And Tomas, I really can’t speak knowledgeably about the Rafael-SuperHornet comparison, or whether the comparison itself has much validity.
Looking at the two airframes generically, it would appear to me that Rafael is probably faster, but has shorter range. The delta-wing design is great for high speed flight, but aircraft with that wingform bleed airspeed like an ebola victim in a turning fight, and from what I’ve personally seen of the E/F, there’s no conventional-thrust jet that can maneuver with it a high AOA.
Stuff you can’t tell by looking at it is how the systems work. The French typically build much better jammers than they do radars, and their reputation for user-friendliness and maintainability has been suspect in the past. They will sell to anyone though, and eventually the good stuff falls into the hands of those who either won’t or can’t buy gear from us.