It was in traffic this morning. Of course, it was sanitized so there were no ship names involved.

Wow. Total lack of concern with the surface picture.

I found it odd the only professional ship driver was in the CDC, btw he was the only one doing things right.

The question goes to you Bird Farm vets: is it normal to keep the shipdrivers cooped up in CDC?

I'm no Bird Farmer, but as for the CDC, I believe someone had to take the bullet.

Imagine- what if? and who alse would you bag?

The CO, Navigator, OOD and JOOD were all on the bridge. None were below the rank of LT(O-3).

The shipdriver wasn't fired as far as I know. I just find it odd that a ship wouldn't have a professional shipdriver somewhere on the bridge.

As a former ship driver, I will tell you this: by regulations Naval Aviators and Naval Flight Officers are the only one that can ascend to command of an aircraft carrier.

That's why this shit went down.  Fucking flyboys get one tour as CO of some fucking oiler or UNREP ship, with SWO XO and departmend heads covering their ass 24/7, and then go on to command our 2nd most precious capital ships (the first are SSBNs, commanded by PROFESSIONAL submariners).

Those dickweeds don't know fuck-all about seamanship and navigation, and precious little about tactics outside of air warfare.

Nice racket they have going, turning the Navy into an air force.

While I wouldn't put it quite so succinctly I totally agree with the above. They are totally used to everybody getting out of their way.  Even skippering an Unrep Ship will tend to reinforce that because they are usually with a group of ships, and  most ships tend to stay away from groups of ships.  Although I saw  a Russkie  merchie on Iron Mike (auto-pilot ) (we think) steam into an unrep group  when it was the give way vessel, the unrep ship had the Ranger (the Ranger probably, it was the most dangerous carrier to be around at the time)to port and a small boy to starboard.  I was JOOD, and the CO XO Ops Boss and Weps Boss were on the bridge.  We could see it coming visually and on radar and called the guys up since it promised to mildly exciting (that and the CO generally stayed on the bridge whan a carrier was anywhere in the vicinity.

The carrier came up on int'l calling.  "This is the US Navy Carrier Ranger.  We hold you as the give way vessel.  What are your intentions? "  No response, continued calling for about 10 minutes getting more agitated.  The Plane Guard CH-46 flew over and did  everything..

The Unrep ship was suggesting that breakaways be executed.  The CAG insisted on maintaining course and speed.  The Unrep CO was getting pretty worried.  Remember this bad boy was coming in from the  port side.  And the Ranger was sitting there and blocking both visual and radar  to to port.  We were on station about 4000 yds to Stbd, the CO wanted us to be relatively close so that when it was our turn  to move to plane guard/next in line to drink we wouldn't have to take too long.  But we started opening in case things went to poop.    It became apparent that it was going to poo. and we turned and ran.  The small boy  emergency broke  and came hard to stbd about 135 degrees of base course, the unrep ship and Ranger broke and the unrep ship came hard to stbd and just tried to get the hell out of Dodge and the Ranger came as hard to stbd as a carrier can.  Shipdrivers would have been prepared to maneuver because we are used to merchies and fishermen NOT following Rules of the Road or Law of Gross Tonnage.

Sub drivers are the opposite, hellaciously paranoid when ever shallow or on the surface.

We had CruDes 7th Flt on board and were off Subic running an EW range calibrating something.  Big Bird had the Deck, I was JOOD and had the Conn.  We were tooling around just after sunrise back and forth back and forth about 4 miles off the beach and 300 ft of water.  The Captains Night Orders  were to run the range, and half an hour after breakfast was called away set Sea and Anchor Detail and head on in.  The Staff duty officer, a Boomer driver came out on the bridge and had dithering kittens.  "Why hadn't we set Sea and Anchor, we were in Restricted Waters?"  and things went downhill from there.  Big Bird basically told him we were performing in accordance with the Night Orders and besides these weren't restriced waters, we got 50 fathoms of water under us, which was about 45 more than we needed and the nearest shoal water was 3 miles over there.  And he demanded we we go to Sea and Anchor and call the CO to the bridge.  Well Big Bird was a real short timer and threw the CDR off the Bridge.

The XO who had recently transgerred from the Staff came storming on the bridge about 5 minutes later.  WTF?  Sir, he ordered us to act in contravention of the Captains Night Orders and he had no authority to do that..  XO called the CO and told him what happened, the CO went to the Chief Staff Officer and reminded him an old buddy (Bud Edney as a matter of fact)  that the Staff Waatch Officer could not directly order his bridge watch to do anything.  

The Sub driver got reminded of protocol between staff and Flagship, and then got told that "Restricted Waters" for a real ship was different that for a SSBN.

And I thought this was gonna be about Ted.

I thought they finally figured out who shot JFK!!  

Quoted: And I thought this was gonna be about Ted. hr

Me too.