Tailhook Daily Briefing

How to Give the Air Boss a Conniption!

Well you could try some of this with your Rino… or better yet the Hawkeye?

Zoltan Veres personally uses an Extra 300S… M-Press-ive!

Songs You Can “Hummer” along with

A little fun for a Monday night in honor of all of our Hummer Bubbas… Aka the Electric Mushrooms… provided courtesy of VAW-116 the Sun Kings (circa ‘06 I think). – apologies to SJS…

Which brings me to a request of our community, if anyone has some more nostalgic historical fosc’l  folly materials similar to the above but prior to You Tube that you can digitize and send… please send to us at Tailhook using our contributions e-mail thookassn@aol.com attention “Daily Briefing Editor” I’ll be glad to post here… the background story would be helpful too.

USS Stockdale Commissioned

Today a Hero to not only Naval Aviation but to a Grateful Nation was honored.  The USS James Stockdale (DDG 106) the Navy’s latest Arleigh Burke class destroyer was commissioned at Naval Base Ventura County Port Hueneme.

Most all of us in the Tailhook community are very well aware of the legacy this man represents.  But his philosophical foundations could easily benefit all.

From the Ships Biography:

On September 9, 1965, then-Commander Stockdale catapulted his A-4E Skyhawk off the flight deck of the U.S.S. Oriskany on what turned out to be his final mission over North Vietnam .  Approaching his target, his plane was riddled with anti-aircraft fire.  Within seconds, his engine was aflame and all hydraulic control was gone.  He "punched out," watching his plane slam into a rice paddy and explode in a fireball.  Stockdale himself best describes what happened next:

"As I ejected from the plane I broke a bone in my back, but that was only the beginning.  I landed in the streets of a small village.  A thundering herd was coming down on me.  They were going to defend the honor of their town.  It was the quarterback sack of the century."

They tore off his clothes and beat him mercilessly.  Stockdale suffered a broken leg and paralyzed arm before a military policeman took him into custody.  He was now a prisoner of war, the highest ranking naval officer to be held as a POW in Vietnam.

     Stockdale wound up in Hoa Lo Prison - the infamous " Hanoi Hilton" -- where he spent the next seven and a half years under unimaginably brutal conditions. He was physically tortured no fewer than 15 times.  Techniques included beatings, whippings, and near-asphyxiation with ropes.  Mental torture was incessant.  He was kept in solitary confinement, in total darkness, for four years, chained in heavy, abrasive leg irons for two years, malnourished due to a starvation diet, denied medical care, and deprived of letters from home in violation of the Geneva Convention.

     Through it all, Stockdale's captors held out the promise of better treatment if he would only admit that the United States was engaging in criminal behavior against the Vietnamese people, but Stockdale refused.  Drawing strength from principles of stoic philosophy, Stockdale heroically resisted. His courage was an inspiration to his fellow POWs, with whom he communicated in an ingenious code, maintaining unit cohesion and morale.  His jailers increased the level of torture, so Stockdale determined to fight back in the only way he could.

     Told that he was to be taken "downtown" and paraded in front of foreign journalists, Stockdale slashed his scalp with a razor and beat himself in the face with a wooden stool.  He reasoned that his captors would not dare display a prisoner who appeared to have been beaten.  When he learned that his fellow prisoners were dying under torture, he slashed his wrists to show their captors that he preferred death to submission.  Stockdale literally gambled with his life, and won. Convinced of Stockdale's determination to die rather than cooperate, the Communists ceased trying to extract bogus "confessions" from him.  The torture of American prisoners ended, and treatment of all American POWs improved.  Upon his release in 1973, Stockdale's extraordinary heroism became widely known, and he received the Congressional Medal of Honor in the nation's bicentennial year.  He was one of the most highly decorated officers in the history of the Navy, with 26 personal combat decorations, including four Silver Star medals in addition to the Medal of Honor.

 

Throughout Stockdale's captivity, his wife Sybil campaigned for respectful treatment for the families of all POWs by founding the League of Families. Sybil Stockdale was presented with the U.S. Navy Department's Distinguished Public Service Award by the Chief of Naval Operations. She is the only wife of an active-duty officer ever to be so honored.

After serving as the President of the Naval War College, Stockdale retired from the Navy in 1978 and embarked on a distinguished academic career, including a term as President of the Citadel, and 15 years as a Senior Research Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. In 1992 he graciously agreed to a request from his old friend H. Ross Perot to stand with Perot as the vice presidential candidate of the Reform Party, and throughout the campaign he comported himself with the same integrity and dignity that marked his entire career. Together, the Stockdales told their story in a joint memoir, In Love and War. Admiral Stockdale and his wife lived quietly on Coronado Island, off of San Diego, until his death in 2005.

Admiral Stockdale, legacy provides for much more than a story of angst and management of desperate times, these are not what made him the leader he was.  It is what Admiral Stockdale learned from these times, and how he applied the test of these experiences to formulate the principles of Leadership he could then share with other future leaders in the US Military as well as civilian world.  Admiral Stockdale provides us with the following guiding principle:

"The challenge of education is not to prepare a person for success, but to prepare him for failure." It is in disaster, not success, that the heroes and the bums really get sorted out.

Admiral Stockdale is known in the Navy as the Fighter Pilot Philosopher, and a truer moniker could not be applied.  His teaching at Stanford and the War College have prepared many a student in the better ways to deal with life’s unexpected events rather than the expected.

The Stoics said that "Character is fate." What I am saying is that in my life, education has been fate. I became what I learned, or maybe I should say I became the distillation of what fascinated me most as I learned it. Only three years after I left graduate school, I participated in the refounding of my own civilization after doom's day, when the giant doors of an Old World dungeon had slammed shut and locked me and a couple hundred other Americans in--in total silence, in solitary confinement, in leg irons, in blindfolds for weeks at a time, in antiquity, in a political prison.

Stockdale encouraged us all to “Become Educated” both for our selves and for those we affect, having the tools to manage and experience our lives, not just live them.  Most importantly to have full understanding that our pursuits should always be grounded in the "Foundations of Moral Obligations!”

If you do not fully understand what Admiral Stockdale was onto here, and most (I would go out on a limb and state…) do not… I would highly recommend reading the Scholarly Article  “In War, In Prison, In Antiquity” and then you may choose to also brush up on the capabilities of the “Stoic” in today’s modern warfare and leadership environments.  They ring more true today than ever.

The Reading list:

1. The Stoic Warrior's Triad: Tranquility, Fearlessness and Freedom
2. Master of My Fate: A Stoic Philosopher in a Hanoi Prison
3. The Enchiridion (by Epictetus)

Today a crew begins to serve our nation on a ship that will proudly bear the name USS Stockdale, our blessing is on this ship and all that sail her, do us proud, do Admiral James Bond Stockdale proud, and most importantly, do yourself proud!  Welcome to the fleet USS Stockdale!

Fair Winds and Following Seas USS Stockdale!

More on the USS Stockdale here USS Stockdale DDG-106 Home Page

New Warning Labels on Carriers?

Anyone notice the new warning at the ramp?

I was appreciating this very  well composed photo (above) of an HS-3 Seahawk approaching the fantail of the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) taken by Communication Specialist 2nd Class Nathan Laird when I noticed something I had not seen before…

Closer inspection of the ramp reveals…

 

Deck department humor?

Hooo Ya!

That’s how you do that!

The US Navy, put an end to the hostage standoff utilizing the skills of Navy Seals and their snipers where Somali Pirates, were holding Richard Phillips, the Captain of the Maersk Alabama!

Bloomberg: Sharpshooters firing from the fantail of a U.S. Navy destroyer killed three pirates holding an American cargo-ship captain in a lifeboat, ending a five-day ordeal that unfolded amid a surge in piracy off Somalia’s coast.

Richard Phillips, 53, captain of the Maersk Alabama, was untied, pulled from the lifeboat and brought unharmed aboard the USS Bainbridge, said Vice Admiral Bill Gortney, the commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command.

The Navy acted because Phillips’s life was threatened by pirates who were aiming weapons at him, Gourtney said. The on- scene commander “had seconds” to make a decision, he said.

Cmdr. Frank Castellano, CO of the USS Bainbridge (DDG-96)shakes hands with an appreciative Captain Phillips after the successful actions of the US NAVY!

Phillips is quoted as saying in a phone conversation to his bosses at Maersk, "I'm just the byline. The heroes are the Navy, the Seals and those that have brought me home…"

 

“The captain’s life was in immediate danger,” said Gortney, who spoke by teleconference from his headquarters in Bahrain. “The pirates were armed with AK-47s and had small- caliber pistols, and they were pointing the AK-47 at the captain.”

The White House is stating that President Obama “ORDERED” the Defense department to take all necessary action if the captain's life was in immediate danger. 

Uh… Thanks?

A hearty BRAVO ZULU goes out to the Seals and the Crew of the USS Bainbridge, and USS Boxer for taking it to ‘em!

Calling All Marine F4U Drivers

Looking for anyone who was part of VMF-215 from 1943-45, aviator, ground-pounder or those who may have flown with VMF-215 in combined/associated operations during that period.  Bryan Bender, a reporter with the Boston Globe, is looking for any of the above to flesh out a story he is working on stemming from earlier work on a returned MIA from that period and which was featured in a Flightdeck Friday at the mothership.  Feel free to go VFR direct -- his contact info as follows:

email: bender@globe.com  

Thanks All!
- SJS

Where are the Carriers?… What Carriers?

Could this be the answer to the long time tried and true crisis query?

Well… maybe.

From our friends over at the ANA, the following:

30 March 2009

Back in October Blue Stripe 7 reported a current and growing aircraft shortfall in Naval Aviation. Since then, if anything, things have gotten worse, exacerbated by ongoing attacks in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill.

The president unveiled his 2010 budget to the public back in February but that was only a broad outline of proposed spending. The Department of Defense is now refining those top lines into specific programs. There is a tight veil of secrecy surrounding this exercise and no one outside the lifelines really knows what’s going on within the Pentagon, but there has been enough information to know that there is cause for concern.

With heavy emphasis on ground forces the Navy and the air force will be called upon to be the bill payers. For example, even though the National Strategy calls for an aircraft carrier force of eleven, and the Congress has mandated twelve, there’s high probability that the Navy will be unable to afford more than ten. If the Navy is forced to give up a carrier there will go with it at least one air wing’s worth of aircraft, a battle group’s worth of helicopters and a commensurate number of patrol and logistics aircraft. While this will be bad for the Navy, the real problem is what it will take away from the Nation. As a current example, even today aircraft carriers and their air wings are supporting Central Command by flying 46 percent of the reconnaissance and close air support sorties in Iraq and Afghanistan , 75 percent of electronic attack missions in Iraq and 100 percent in Afghanistan . Meanwhile, because of this and other combatant commander requirements all aircraft are being over-utilized. At the current rate, given no further procurement, the Navy will be as many as 150, perhaps as many as 200, strike fighters short of what’s needed within five years, and that’s with the most optimistic projection of JSF production. At the same time the procurement of the E2D Hawkeye has been placed in jeopardy and with it the fleet’s best anti-ship missile defense system. Add to that the fact that because the air force has failed to include any tactical electronic warfare aircraft in its plans demands for Growlers outside Navy needs can be most certainly anticipated, further exacerbating shortfalls on the carrier decks. If the decks don’t get filled, then why not lay up a carrier or two, and all the ships and helicopters that go with it in the battle group as well? After all, what’s a carrier without an air wing?

Even now, carrier air wings are transferring strike fighters from deck to deck to ensure deployments with a full inventory. This in itself sends operating costs up and wears out what strike fighters we do have that much faster. If the new Hawkeye is similarly delayed the same problem will be manifested. What’s so sad is that solutions are at hand.

Each of the Block II F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, Growler E2D programs are under cost, with production lines open and capable of early delivery. It’s only that for whatever reasons certain minds are made up. It will take more than Navy analysis and pleas to change those minds. It will take the sum total of the voices of concerned citizens from around the country in support of the Navy to make the situation known to bureaucrats, the Administration and legislators of both parties.

Only one thing remains certain in these uncertain times, U.S. Navy carrier based aviation provides a relevant, capable and unconstrained force for the combatant commanders around the globe. They must be protected, preserved, and promoted. Now is the time to turn on our transmitters and get this message to the highest levels in the Pentagon and on the Hill!

I encourage each of you to offer your support – both publicly and privately – for acquisition of these necessary aircraft. Our Naval Aviation warfighters need our full support to achieve a solution to this crisis and will greatly appreciate your individual and collective efforts. In the end, it’s the Nation that will benefit.

• Robert F. Dunn
• Acting Chairman and President
• Association of Naval Aviation

Tailhookers too should be prepared to take up verbal swords in defending that which requires our attention.  No one knows better than us, the importance of sustainability when it comes to our nation’s defense. 

If we sit idly by while we assume congress will not let us down and do what is right… well… we will be sorely disappointed in our lot.  The Navy and we supporters of the Navy did similar in the late 70’s and reaped a disastrous crop.  Let’s not repeat history that needs no repeating.

-JC