Video link: Jerry Hendrix Navy Series.
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) speaks to retired Navy Captain Jerry Hendrix II about the Navy’s history. What it does, how it works and the types of ships and aircraft within it. And most important: Why it needs to exist.
The navy will soon come home to port and run the other way.
I saw a recruitment commercial for the Navy a few hours ago. It showed real sailors and real Marines training and preparing to fight. Then I thought of the recruitment commercials when Obama was in the White House. It called the US Navy ‘a global force for good’. WTF? The new ones basically say ‘where getting ready to kill you if you fuck with us’.
We don’t need to be the world’s cop. Period.
WE don’t need to be spending what we are on military. Not even a fraction.
Trump says the first. He’s scared to say the second. But number two follows number one just like night follows day.
You mean the Navy’s purpose isn’t to provide a staging for The Village People and Cher videos?
BB-63!
I’ll have some faith in the Naval services again when they drop their idiotic political correctness, quit slamming ships into each other on the high seas and the ships captains aren’t wearing panty hose on the bridge.
Obama the deviant salted the military services with the dregs of society, lets hope the new administration has made those types less wecome.
How the Navy is being used is more important than the Navy itself.
Same with the rest of the military forces.
What do you call it when the Coast Guard intercepts a drug shipment?
High Seize 😁
That’s still better than the old seaman/semen joke. I’m still proud of the 3 years that I spent in the Navy from 1972-75. It helped me to grow up, see the World in the Western Pacific, Indian Ocean and The Persian Gulf when I was 20-22 years old. And a greater appreciation for America and it’s sacrifices for freedom when I came home right after the end of the Vietnam War. And besides getting to work on the flight deck of the USS Kitty Hawk CV 63 for nearly 2 years as a Plane Captain with my F-4 J Phantom fighter squadron VF-114 The Aardvarks was the experience of a lifetime that I wouldn’t trade for anything. And the fact that I am not that good of a mechanic, just ask my dad and my brothers, the Navy trusted me and taught me how to work on and maintain F-4 J Phantom jets when I was a young man. I wish that Admiral Zumwalt was still alive, he wouldn’t have put up with all this PC crap that has happened to the Navy and the rest of the military since Jimmy Carter and only has become worse under slick willie and obummer when they were Commander in Chief. I had to clean the base theater at NAS Miramar in the Spring of 1973 when I was TAD to Special Services (I was the duty driver, ran the theater and the pool hall on duty days and various other duties when I was 20) the night before Admiral Zumwalt came to Miramar for an inspection. And I ran the projector for Adm. Zumwalt’s presentation inside the base theater the next day. It’s a darn good thing everything was spotless and ship shape and I did my best. I didn’t get to meet the Admiral personally (I was an an Airman Apprentice at the time with the rank of E-3) but I did get to see him up close and that was good enough for me.
…I don’t understand that picture, maybe some of our Navy guys can help me. Why does it appear that Fly One is directing that plane to move, but it clearly isn’t under its own power since it’s surrounded by guys, some of whom are in front of the intakes, and they’re not in position to be pushing it, which I gotta believe they do not do anyway, them things are heavy!
It also looks like it is being guided onto a catapult, which would seem to be a bad idea with the wingtips folded.
Am I looking at this wrong or is this just a weird montage of things that don’t go together?
…just curious…
The main Purpose of the Navy…Is to keep the Gays out of the Air Force.
😉
It could be that they were getting the jet ready to launch and hadn’t unfolded the wings yet and were positioning it on the catapult. I don’t see a huffer either used to force start air into the engines to get it started and believe me no one is that dumb to be that close to those jet intakes if that jet were ready to go. I had a very healthy respect for jet intakes and I hated A-7’s because their intakes were right under the nose at the front of the A-7, I helped to launch one once in a pinch and wasn’t very happy about it but got the job done. It looks like the crew on the flight deck might have been doing an alert 5, prepositioning the jet to get it off the deck in under 5 minutes with all those guys standing around it. I did a few of those, that’s my best guess.
What a bunch of losers making fun of a branch of the armed forces. Doubtful any of you served anything in your life but you’re own appetites.
…thank you, @geoff the aardvark. I’ve always been fascinated by flight deck operations ever since reading Daniel V. Gallery’s factual books about skippering the Jeep carrier Guadalcanal when he captured the U-505 and his fictions based on his real life experiences as an Admiral where he went into quite a bit of detail about flying both props and jets from carriers, so I always appreciate learning a little more from one who knows. My wife’s uncle was also a 22 year decorated crew chief on the Bonhomme Richard in Vietnam, but of course I didn’t get friendly with him until shortly before he died, so many wonderful stories and much knowledge was lost.
Share what you have far and wide, @Geoff, so we can get a sense of what goes into these things and how hard they are to do well, and how often you did them well every day.
Thank you too for your service.
God Bless,
SNS
Someone made a major screwup at Miramar once when an old F-8 Crusader took off with its wings folded and no one on the ground or the air traffic controller caught it while it was taking off. The pilot managed to get it in the air and was headed West towards the Pacific Ocean when he bailed out with the F-8 crashing into the ocean.
@Rick – Calm down. It’s just friendly chop busting between services. Besides, the AF types are just upset that their dress uniform makes them look like Greyhound Bus drivers. And makes them fly like them too. 😉
@geoff the aardvark – I was in from 73-79 and remember Zumwalt. I’m not sure I can forgive him for canning the traditional cracker-jack (RASSIS!) uniform for that stupid navy-blue suit. Thank goodness cooler heads prevailed and we went back to jumper in summer of 79.
The USS Bonhomme Richard an old Korean war aircraft carrier was moored at NAS North Island directly across San Diego bay when I was in boot camp in the fall of 1972. We could see it all lit up at night from boot camp. It was retired and scrapped shortly after the time I was in boot camp. And it was the first and probably oldest aircraft carrier that I ever saw close by. I also saw the USS Oriskany another old aircraft carrier once when we we were in the S. China Sea, they were headed for a liberty call in Subic Bay in the Philippines and we were headed to be off the coast of Vietnam at Yankee Station in the Gulf of Tonkin. The Navy sank and scuttled the Oriskany in the Gulf of Mexico and turned it into an artificial reef, I remember seeing a documentary about that back in either the late 80’s or early 90’s. F4U Corsair, I too was not happy with the change in uniforms from dungarees (bell bottoms) and the blue work shirts to those new uniforms either at the time.
geoff the aardvark JULY 7, 2020 AT 8:27 AM
“… And I ran the projector for Adm. Zumwalt’s presentation inside the base theater the next day.”
…this just reminds me of a DV Gallery story, from “Eight Bells” I believe, where he talks about a RIO who lost his job as a projectionist on a Vietnam-era carrier hangar deck to what he called an “earbanger”, which seems to be equivalent to a suck-up nowadays, and to get it back used a chewing-gum tipped antenna to play with the volume knob throughout the show, then put a cigarette into a a sprinkler head to finish it that flooded the deck and got the guy he wanted to replace into a huge amount of trouble.
Later, while flying a mission in an unmentioned type of two-seat aircraft, his pilot passed out while he was in the rear seat after setting the autopilot to orbit, and he refused to get out even though he was ordered to because he had an antenna and chewing gum, so he had the carrier tell him when the plane was turned into the wind after it ran out of fuel, then used it to reach into the front cockpit and flip the autopilot knob to make the plane straight, level, and into the wind. The plane sucessfully ditched and he got the pilot out, who recovered, and when they got him out of the water and were discussing his commendastion, he told them he did it the same way as he changed the theatre volume and put the cigarette in becuase he didn’t want the other guy to get severely punished for it. Due to his heriosim the skipper let him off, but with a warning that he’d be keelhauled if he ever did such a thing again.
Factual? The book was a fiction, so no. But the good Rear Admiral based a lot of his work on things that happened to him in real life, so maybe somewhere, in some command, it DID happen.
Plausible? YOU could answer that better than I…
…OK, I’ll stop now, but I just think it’s great that I can bounce some of this off someone who actually knows what they are talking about, but I’ll stop taking advantage of it now and return everyone to the reguarly scheduled blog…
One of my first Commanding Officers permanently lost his Pilots wings by flying a jet under the Deception Pass Bridge near NAS Whidbey Island in Wash. state when he was stationed there. They caught him because of the tail number on his aircraft. He was allowed to be a RIO though. He was a good guy compared to my next C O who was a racist and didn’t like blacks or other minorities in his Squadron. He was a prick, and the Navy gave him a black XO which we thought was hilarious. If you’ve ever seen the movie The Great Santini with Robert Duvall he was exactly that kind of jerk Officer.
@ F4U Corsair
I didn’t forget about You serving at Homestead Air Force Base !!!!
@Bobcat – Damn, I miss the bass fishing and shrimping in March.
Today’s Navy leadership is embarrassing. They just issued an order banning sailors from attending off-base religious services, but permitting “house parties” and attending protests.
I spent 25 years in the Navy, serving aboard five ballistic missile submarines, but can not in good conscience recommend today’s Navy for young people.
That makes you a “Boomer Boomer,” NIdahoCatholic.
Jimmy. Yup.