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
Because he cares, and he’s doing it for the children.
I wonder about the C-17s not being needed, however. Isn’t Gates shutting down the C-17 line, and the AF choking about it?
Actually, the USAF could use more C-17′s. However this is most definitely the wrong way to go about it.
Simple truth is that widebody lift is a constriction on parts flow for both Navy and USAF to the Gulf and to the War Zones. But that’s something that should be examined separately and not be lumped into the war supplemental.
As for C-130′s, to hell with giving them to the USAF or the Air Guard-the Navy is the service that needs them. Yesterday.
Not to mention the Coast Guard, who flies them daily.
I agree with you there Skippy. When it has come to C-130s the ANG seems to get what they want. The Navy and Marines get the short end of the stick.
The C-17 line needs to be kept open. The F-22 line does too.
You know the story of the Reno Air Guard don’t you? They had the choice of converting to F-16′s or 130′s. 130′s gave them more drilling billets-so guess which airframe won out. $$ won over thrills.
I didn’t think the Navy flew C-130s – they left those to the Marines.
Currently flown by the Navy Reserve. Five squadrons worth. In the past, KC-130s were flown by VR-22, based in Rota and VRC-50 at Cubi. LC-130s were flown by the Antarctic support squadron, VXE-6, until ’99. VC-3 flew drone launching DC-130s until ’79. And the two TACAMO squadrons, VQ-3 and -4, flew C-130s until transitioning to the E-6 in ’98.
C-130s? They’re still being built?!?
Murtha is a pig, but I must admit, there are definitely worse things to spend money on than an airplane design that’s older than the parents of the kids flying it — and can still do everything that’s asked of it.
Every now and then I wonder if Lockheed ever tried modifying the Herky-Bird for carrier duty. It can do just about everydamnthing else, why not that too?
I thought I saw a video once of a C-130 that did land on a carrier. Some sort of special ops mission test or something. Maybe I’m confusing it with certain medium bombers bound for Tokyo but I thought in the 70s they tried it….
1963. USS Forrestal. Pilot, James Flatley, later Admiral, and son of WWII Ace and VADM Jimmy Flatley. More detail here.
The link seems to be dead. Years ago I saw a pic of a C-130 on a carrier in NA News. They launched it, took a bunch of RATO bottles to do it, so it wasn’t something they were going to want to do regularly. I think they landed one one time, on the Forrestal as well. It didn’t work well as the deck wasn’t wide enough to give any space for comfort. The wing barely missed the Island.
I wonder how things would work out on a Nimitz class carrier.
The C-130 is still being built. I don’t know if the 130s Murtha wants built are earmarked for any certain branch. The ANG seems to get the newest equipment when it comes to C-130s. That may be because of their political pull, which they have a lot of.
Lex — for some reason, WordPress puts an extra ” on my links, so they don’t work properly. If anyone is interested, you can just delete the ” from the end of the url in your browser, and it will work fine. Anyway, they did a few more landings than just one:
The operational need was revealed by the crisis in Lebanon in 1958. The Navy wanted to be able to move AMCITs off shore to a carrier, but not have to keep them there. But when the first C2 prototype flew in ’64, they had their solution.
Almost as interesting as the U2 landings on America in ’69.
Scott, do you have a link to the U-2 landings on America. Served in every rank from O-1 through O-6 on CV-66 and never heard about it.
I always wonder if the Military (all services) submit budget/acquisition requests excluding the trash haulers etc, focusing on their “War Fighting” cool toys, knowing full well that the Narcissists Under the Dome will do exactly this…
Why request what you know you will always get.
-JC
John Murtha has been in office for over 35 years. He’s built a tribute to himself in his home town and has a cancer center named after himself, as well as an airport, technology center, highway, etc. I have had enough with John Murtha AND other wasteful and unethical Congressman and I HAVE DECIDED TO RUN FOR CONGRESS AGAINST JOHN MURTHA! Please see my website at: http://www.timburnsforcongress.com. He will spend over $3 million to defeat me, so we need funds to compete with him. Please consider supporting this campaign to rid this country of John Murtha once and for all! Thank you and God Bless.
U-2 USS America Operations
Video here.
CV-666 can land anything on it.
Maybe that is the explaination for some of my more inexplicable CV66 landings — like the joke about our Alma Mater. Guy jumped out of the third floor window trying to commit suicide. Place sucks so bad it pulled him back in.
“Really, Paddles, I have no idea how I got that _OK_. Seemed like the ship was pulling me in on rails…”
Scott, thanks. America was a nice deck to work. Boss.
I’m not going to cry about more C-17s being built, although I wonder if Gates has the cojones to pull a McNamara and “refuse to release” authorized funds for a given program. Gates will almost certainly let this slide. I don’t think the C-17 is the big name program he wants to hang his name on killing. The F-22 gets that honor.
If they don’t need fleet expansion (which they do need, there’s not enough airlift capacity) they can use them to replace older aircraft that are nearing the end of their service life.
Of course for expansion you also need operational funding, and that’s of course not included (most likely that’s been cut to fund the new purchase) so it’s a double edged sword to say the least.