But enterprising West Point cadets exact some revenge by a daring daylight helicopter strike on Annapolis.

3:22 video

From Xavier:

This exchange was overheard on the VHF Guard (emergency) frequency 121.5 MHz while flying from Europe to Dubai.

Air Defense Radar: ............... (no response … total silence)

Noemie Emory, in the Weekly Standard, explains why the choice of Sarah Palin is a brilliant strategic move.

1. Steps on the story of Obama’s speech (and convention), and possibly the bounce coming from them, and wipes them off the news cycle. The Sunday news shows will be all-Palin, all of the time.

2. Sends Republicans into their convention on a huge head of steam.

3. Wipes out the image of McCain as the crotchety elder and brings back that of the fly-boy and gambler, which is much more appealing, and the genuine person.

4. Revs up the base AND excites independents, which no one else in the party, or perhaps in the world, could have accomplished.

5. Puts youth, change, and history on both of the tickets.

6. May detach some young people, especially women.

7. May attach some women pissed off about Hillary.

8. As a pro-life super-achiever, puts feminists in a tizzy.

9. Revives some of the double-edged nature of the Democratic primary, which featured a black vs. a female trail-blazer, and put both sides on notice on sensitivity issues. Democrats used to raising charges of racism against Obama’s critics may face charges of sexism and/or condescension if they try to diss her.

10. Steps on Obama’s claims to have been a reformer, as he reformed nothing (much less the corrupt mare’s nest of Chicago arrangements), while she was a dragon-slayer up in Alaska.

11. As a mother of five, one a Down Syndrome baby, helps her side take on the Democrats on abortion extremism and the Born Alive bill.

12. Reignites the deep and unhealed stresses inside the Democrats, some of whom will now wonder more loudly than ever why they didn’t pick Hillary.

13. Counters Michelle in a way Cindy couldn’t.

14. Counter-intuitively, makes the issue of Obama’s light resume more potent than ever. Her lack of experience is no more than his is. And he’s—to use a term from Alaska, and the Iditarod—their lead dog.

McCain displayed with this selection a boldness and willingness to gamble uncharacteristic of Washington politicians. It’s more in the spirit of the US Navy, going completely on the offensive and being willing to risk everything to deliver a decisive blow in a form the enemy could never have anticipated and prepared for.

I don’t think McCain came up with all of this himself, but he is clearly getting some very clever advice these days, to which he is paying attention. He may very well be president yet.

——————————————
H/t to Karen L. Myers.

Chinese news service photo of USS McFaul delivering humanitarian supplies at Batumi

EarthTimes quotes an Interfax News Agency Russian press release indicating that the Russian Black Sea Fleet is “shifting positions” to the rear.

Elements of Russia’s Black Sea fleet shifted locations on Wednesday in an possible move to avoid a confrontation with a growing NATO warship flotilla near Georgia. Russian naval vessels operating off of Georgia’s coastline had moved from a station in the vicinity of the Georgian port Poti into “Abkhazian territorial waters,” said Sergei Menialo, commander of Russia’s Novorossisk naval base, according to an Interfax news agency report.

The shift took a group of some six to eight Russian warships that had been patrolling near the Georgian port of Poti out of the path of US warships reportedly planning to make a humanitarian aid delivery to the same location. ...

NATO led by the US began a dramatic increase to its naval presence in the Black Sea in mid-August, after Russian refusal to abide by a Russo-Georgian ceasefire plan engineered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

The NATO flotilla led by the American destroyer USS McFaul already has exceeded ten warships and will reach eighteen vessels in coming days, Kremlin officials citing Russian intelligence said Tuesday.

German, Polish, Spanish, and Canadian warships are among the members of the multi-national squadron being assembled in the Black Sea, according to Georgian media reports.

Russian admiral Sergei Kasatonov admitted the growing NATO naval formation would soon be stronger than the Russian Black Sea warships off Georgia and Abkhazia’s shore, but added the Kremlin could in case of a confrontation deal with the western vessels “using other forms of combat power, including aviation assets.”

Years ago, when I was working on military simulations games, a historical discussion got going within the development group, a gang of hard-core military history buffs, about the threat to US and Nato forces posed by a much-reported Soviet Naval build-up.

“When was the last time Russia won a major naval engagement?” sardonically asked one of the senior designers.

Despite the vast store of expertise on matters of this kind readily at hand, puzzlement ensued.

One authority suggest the Battle of Navarino in 1827 during the Greek War of Independence. But the example was rejected because Russia had merely participated in a combined operation with France and Britain, under British command.

Finally, smiling, one of the most knowledgeable people present, suggested John Paul Jones’ 1788 victory over the Turks in the Liman arm of the Black Sea. “But, they won’t have Jones in command today, will they?” he concluded, reducing the crowd of analysts and prognosticators to gales of derisive laughter at the idea of what would happen to the Russian Navy if it tried taking on a naval service like our own, one with a firm and unbroken tradition of victory.

P.J. O’Rourke visits an aircraft carrier and becomes a fan of John McCain’s.

Some say John McCain’s character was formed in a North Vietnamese prison. I say those people should take a gander at what John chose to do—voluntarily. Being a carrier pilot requires aptitude, intelligence, skill, knowledge, discernment, and courage of a kind rarely found anywhere but in a poem of Homer’s or a half gallon of Dewar’s. I look from John McCain to what the opposition has to offer. There’s Ms. Smarty-Pantsuit, the Bosnia-Under-Sniper-Fire poster gal, former prominent Washington hostess, and now the JV senator from the state that brought you Eliot Spitzer and Bear Stearns. And there’s the happy-talk boy wonder, the plaster Balthazar in the Cook County political crèche, whose policy pronouncements sound like a walk through Greenwich Village in 1968: “Change, man? Got any spare change? Change?”

Some people say John McCain isn’t conservative enough. But there’s more to conservatism than low taxes, Jesus, and waterboarding at Gitmo. Conservatism is also a matter of honor, duty, valor, patriotism, self-discipline, responsibility, good order, respect for our national institutions, reverence for the traditions of civilization, and adherence to the political honesty upon which all principles of democracy are based. Given what screw-ups we humans are in these respects, conservatism is also a matter of sense of humor. Heard any good quips lately from Hillary or Barack?

A one-day visit to an aircraft carrier is a lifelong lesson in conservatism. The ship is immense, going seven decks down from the flight deck and ten levels up in the tower. But it’s full, with some 5,500 people aboard. Living space is as cramped as steerage on the way to Ellis Island. Even the pilots live in three-bunk cabins as small and windowless as hall closets. A warship is a sort of giant Sherman tank upon the water. Once below deck you’re sealed inside. There are no cheery portholes to wave from.

McCain could hardly escape understanding the limits of something huge but hermetic, like a government is, and packed with a madding crowd. It requires organization, needs hierarchies, demands meritocracy, insists upon delegation of authority. An intricate, time-tested system replete with checks and balances is not a plaything to be moved around in a doll house of ideology. It is not a toy bunny serving imaginary sweets at a make-believe political tea party. The captain commands, but his whims do not. He answers to the nation.

And yet an aircraft carrier is more an example of what people can do than what government can’t. Scores of people are all over the flight deck during takeoffs and landings. They wear color-coded T-shirts—yellow for flight-directing, purple for fueling, blue for chocking and tying-down, red for weapon-loading, brown for I-know-not-what, and so on. These people can’t hear each other. They use hand signals. And, come night ops, they can’t do that. Really, they communicate by “training telepathy.” They have absorbed their responsibilities to the point that each knows exactly where to be and when and doing what.

These are supremely dangerous jobs. And most of the flight deck crew members are only 19 or 20. Indeed the whole ship is run by youngsters. The average age, officers and all, is about 24. “These are the same kids,” a chief petty officer said, “who, back on land, have their hats bumped to one side and their pants around their knees, hanging out on corners. And here they’re in charge of $35 million airplanes.”

The crew is in more danger than the pilots. If an arresting cable breaks—and they do—half a dozen young men and women could be sliced in half. When a plane crashes, a weapon malfunctions, or a fire breaks out, there’s no ejection seat for the flight deck crew. While we were on the Theodore Roosevelt a memorial service was held for a crew member who had been swept overboard. Would there have been an admiral and a captain of an aircraft carrier and hundreds of the bravest Americans at a memorial service for you when you were 20?

Supposedly the “youth vote” is all for Obama. But it’s John McCain who actually has put his life in the hands of adolescents on a carrier deck. Supposedly the “women’s vote” is . . . well, let’s not go too far with this. I can speak to John’s honor, duty, valor, patriotism, etc., but I’m not sure how well his self-discipline would have fared if he’d been on an aircraft carrier with more than 500 beautiful women sailors the way I was. At least John likes women, which is more than we can say about Hillary’s attitude toward, for instance, the women in Bill’s life, who at this point may constitute nearly the majority of the “women’s vote.”

These would have been interesting subjects to discuss with the Theodore Roosevelt shipmates, but time was up.

Back on the COD you’re buckled in and told to brace as if for a crash. Whereupon there is a crash. The catapult sends you squashed against your flight harness. And just when you think that everything inside your body is going to blow out your nose and navel, it’s over. You’re in steady, level flight.

A strange flight it is—from the hard and fast reality of a floating island to the fantasy world of American solid ground. In this never-never land a couple of tinhorn Second City shysters—who, put together, don’t have the life experience of the lowest ranking gob-with-a-swab cleaning a head on the Big Stick—presume to run for president of the United States. They’re not just running against the hero John McCain, they’re running against heroism itself and against almost everything about America that ought to be conserved.

I think PJ is getting a bit overenthusiastic about McCain, but he’s right enough on Hillary and Obama.

USS Benfold (DDG 65) Guided Missile Destroyer

If you are the US Navy, whom do you make a signalman on a destroyer going potentially into harm’s way in the Persian Gulf? Why Hassan Abu-Jihaad, of course!

But, I suppose, excluding someone from a high security assignment just because he has converted to Islam and was calling himself “father of Jihad” would be profiling, and we can’t possibly do anything so politically incorrect.

AP:

U.S. Navy commanders were wary as their ships headed to the Persian Gulf in the months after a terrorist ambush in 2000 killed 17 sailors aboard the USS Cole.

Passing the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow, busy shipping lane that often invited challenges from Iran, was never easy. Ship commanders decided to travel quickly at night after conducting a drill. Sailors took up machine gun positions and shut valves and hatches to limit damage in case of attack.

“We really weren’t sure what to expect,” said Lt. Commander Jay Wylie, who was on board the USS Benfold.

No one expected to find a threat from within.

But federal authorities say there was. A Benfold signalman, Hassan Abu-Jihaad, had provided suspected terrorist supporters in London with sensitive details of when U.S. ships would pass through the strait and their vulnerability to attack, prosecutors say.

Testimony last week in Abu-Jihaad’s trial has provided a window into the fears of top Navy officials after an explosives-laden boat rammed the Cole as it refueled in a Yemen harbor. It also revealed how heightened vigilance after Sept. 11 triggered an investigation that began in Connecticut and expanded to London before Abu-Jihaad and others were arrested.

Abu-Jihaad, 32, of Phoenix, has pleaded not guilty to federal charges alleging he provided material support to terrorists and disclosed classified national defense information.

Prosecutors rested their case Friday. Abu-Jihaad does not plan to take the stand Monday when his attorneys call one witness before closing arguments.

Abu-Jihaad, an American born Muslim convert, changed his name from Paul Hall in 1997. A year later, he was granted security clearance that gave him access to secrets, according to Navy officials.

Abu-Jihaad was one of the first sailors Petty Officer Josh Kelly met when he boarded the Benfold. Abu-Jihaad was chatty about where the ship was headed, Kelly says.

“We always wonder where we were going,” Kelly testified, noting the stress of life at sea.

But advance movements were a closely guarded secret. Dennis Amador, a quartermaster and Abu-Jihaad’s supervisor, told his wife where he was in code.

“We in the Navy are taught from the minute we come in that loose lips sink ships,” he said.

Those details were kept locked in a safe with a red sticker marked secret. But when the charts and travel plans were laid out, Abu-Jihaad could see them in his job as a signalman, Navy officials say.

The Benfold and other ships left San Diego in March 2001. Their first stop was Hawaii, where the sailors were treated to a luau feast.

As the ship headed toward the Middle East, Abu-Jihaad began to send e-mails to Azzam Publications, a Web site that authorities say provided money and equipment to terrorists.

While the Cole was the worst nightmare for commanders, Abu-Jihaad called it a martyrdom operation in one of his e-mails to Azzam and praised “the men who have brong (sic) honor … in the lands of jihad Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, etc.”

Abu-Jihaad signed the e-mail: “A brother serving a kuffar nation,” meaning nonbeliever or infidel, according to testimony. He also ordered graphic videos from Azzam that depicted Muslim fighters in Chechnya and Bosnia.

AP:

A missile launched from a Navy ship successfully struck a dying U.S. spy satellite passing 130 miles over the Pacific on Wednesday, a defense official said. Full details were not immediately available.

It happened just after 10:30 p.m. EST.

Two officials said the missile was launched successfully. One official, who is close to the process, said it hit the target. He said details on the results were not immediately known.

The goal in this first-of-its-kind mission for the Navy was not just to hit the satellite but to obliterate a tank aboard the spacecraft carrying 1,000 pounds of a toxic fuel called hydrazine. ...

Officials said it might take a day or longer to know for sure if the toxic fuel was blown up.

If Navy missiles can hit falling satellites, they can probably also hit descending ICBMs. Anybody else remember all the derisive hoots from the liberals about the absolute impossibility of developing a missile defense system? “Star Wars,” the establishment media labeled Ronald Reagan’s proposal derisively.

Well, today, it’s here, and it clearly works. So much for the wisdom of the liberals.

George Friedman of Stratfor’s latest:

Iranian speedboats reportedly menaced U.S. warships in the Strait of Hormuz on Jan. 6. Since then, the United States has gone to great lengths to emphasize the threat posed by Iran to U.S. forces in the strait — and, by extension, to the transit of oil from the Persian Gulf region. ...

According to U.S. reports and a released video, a substantial number of Iranian speedboats approached a three-ship U.S. naval convoy moving through the strait near Iranian territory Jan. 6. ...

The New York Times carried a story Jan. 12, clearly leaked to it by the Pentagon, giving some context for U.S. concerns. According to the story, the United States had carried out war games attempting to assess the consequences of a swarming attack by large numbers of speedboats carrying explosives and suicide crews.

The results of the war games were devastating. In a game carried out in 2002, the U.S. Navy lost 16 major warships, including an aircraft carrier, cruisers and amphibious ships — all in attacks lasting 5-10 minutes. Fleet defenses were overwhelmed by large numbers of small, agile speedboats, some armed with rockets and other weapons, but we assume most operated as manned torpedoes.

The decision to reveal the results of the war game clearly were intended to lend credibility to the Bush administration’s public alarm at the swarming tactics. It raises the issue of why the U.S. warships didn’t open fire, given that the war game must have resulted in some very aggressive rules of engagement against Iranian speedboats in the Strait of Hormuz. But more important, it reveals something about the administration’s thinking in the context of Bush’s trip to the region and the controversial National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran’s nuclear program. ...

One of (President Bush’s) purposes (in traveling to the Middle East) is to create a stronger anti-Iranian coalition among the Arab states on the Arabian Peninsula.

The nuclear threat was not a sufficient glue to create this coalition. For a host of reasons ranging from U.S. intelligence failures in Iraq to the time frame of an Iranian nuclear threat, a nuclear program was simply not seen as a credible basis for fearing Iran’s actions in the region. The states of the Arabian Peninsula were much more afraid of U.S. attacks against Iran than they were of Iranian nuke s in five or 10 years.

The Strait of Hormuz is another matter. Approximately 40 percent of the region’s oil wealth flows through the strait. During the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, the tanker war, in which oil tankers moving through the Persian Gulf came under attack from aircraft, provided a sideshow. This not only threatened the flow of oil but also drove shipping insurance rates through the roof. The United States convoyed tankers, but the tanker war remains a frightening memory in the region.

The tanker war was trivial compared with the threat the United States rolled out last week. The Strait of Hormuz is the chokepoint through which Persian Gulf oil flows. Close the strait and it doesn’t flow. With oil near $100 a barrel, closing the Strait of Hormuz would raise the price — an understatement of the highest order.

We have no idea what the price of oil would be if the strait were closed. Worse, the countries shipping through the strait would not get any of that money. At $100 a barrel, closing the Strait of Hormuz would take an economic triumph and turn it into a disaster for the very countries the United States wants to weld into an effective anti-Iranian coalition. ...

the Iranian naval threat is a far more realistic, immediate and devastating threat to regional interests than the nuclear threat ever was. Building an atomic weapon was probably beyond Iran’s capabilities, while just building a device — an unwieldy and delicate system that would explode under controlled circumstances — was years away. In contrast, the naval threat in the Strait of Hormuz is within Iran’s reach right now. Success is far from a slam dunk considering the clear preponderance of power in favor of U.S. naval forces, but it is not a fantasy strategy by any means.

And its consequences are immediate and affect the Islamic states in ways that a nuclear strike against Israel doesn’t. Getting the Saudis to stand against Iran over an attack against Israel is a reach, regardless of the threat. Getting the Saudis worked up over cash flow while oil prices are near all-time highs does not need a great deal of persuading. ...

If it can establish the threat, the United States goes from being an advocate against Iran to being the guarantor of very real Arab interests. And if the price Arabs must pay for the United States to keep the strait open is helping shut down the jihadist threat in Iraq, that is a small price indeed.

Read the whole thing.

The Daily Mail yesterday (10 Nov 2007) reported:

When the U.S. Navy deploys a battle fleet on exercises, it takes the security of its aircraft carriers very seriously indeed.

At least a dozen warships provide a physical guard while the technical wizardry of the world’s only military superpower offers an invisible shield to detect and deter any intruders.

That is the theory. Or, rather, was the theory.

American military chiefs have been left dumbstruck by an undetected Chinese submarine popping up at the heart of a recent Pacific exercise and close to the vast U.S.S. Kitty Hawk

– a 1,000ft supercarrier with 4,500 personnel on board.

By the time it surfaced the 160ft Song Class diesel-electric attack submarine is understood to have sailed within viable range for launching torpedoes or missiles at the carrier.

According to senior Nato officials the incident caused consternation in the U.S. Navy.

The Americans had no idea China’s fast-growing submarine fleet had reached such a level of sophistication, or that it posed such a threat.

One Nato figure said the effect was “as big a shock as the Russians launching Sputnik” – a reference to the Soviet Union’s first orbiting satellite in 1957 which marked the start of the space age.

The incident, which took place in the ocean between southern Japan and Taiwan, is a major embarrassment for the Pentagon.

The lone Chinese vessel slipped past at least a dozen other American warships which were supposed to protect the carrier from hostile aircraft or submarines.

And the rest of the costly defensive screen, which usually includes at least two U.S. submarines, was also apparently unable to detect it.

According to the Nato source, the encounter has forced a serious re-think of American and Nato naval strategy as commanders reconsider the level of threat from potentially hostile Chinese submarines.

It also led to tense diplomatic exchanges, with shaken American diplomats demanding to know why the submarine was “shadowing” the U.S. fleet while Beijing pleaded ignorance and dismissed the affair as coincidence.

Analysts believe Beijing was sending a message to America and the West demonstrating its rapidly-growing military capability to threaten foreign powers which try to interfere in its “backyard”.

The People’s Liberation Army Navy’s submarine fleet includes at least two nuclear-missile launching vessels.

Its 13 Song Class submarines are extremely quiet and difficult to detect when running on electric motors.

Commodore Stephen Saunders, editor of Jane’s Fighting Ships, and a former Royal Navy anti-submarine specialist, said the U.S. had paid relatively little attention to this form of warfare since the end of the Cold War.

He said: “It was certainly a wake-up call for the Americans.

“It would tie in with what we see the Chinese trying to do, which appears to be to deter the Americans from interfering or operating in their backyard, particularly in relation to Taiwan.”

What is particularly interesting is that a nearly identical incident occurred one year ago 26 October 2006 involving a Chinese Song-class submarine and the same U.S.S. Kitty Hawk.

Also discussed by Spook86.

Photo hopefully not taken from Chinese submarine

Vin Suprynowicz remembers the Autumn of 1942, when one Marine and one Navy ship changed the course of WWII.

One Hill, One Marine:

World War Two is generally calculated from Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939. But that’s a eurocentric view. The Japanese had been limbering up their muscles in Korea and Manchuria as early as 1931, and in China by 1934. By 1942 they’d devastated every major Pacific military force or stronghold of the great pre-war powers: Britain, Holland, France, and the United States. The bulk of America’s proud Pacific fleet lay beached or rusting on the floor of Pearl Harbor. A few aircraft carriers and submarines remained, though as Mitchell Paige and his 30-odd men were sent out to establish their last, thin defensive line on that ridge southwest of the tiny American bridgehead on Guadalcanal on Oct. 25, he would not have been much encouraged to know how those remaining American aircraft carriers were faring offshore. ...

As Paige — then a platoon sergeant — and his riflemen set about carefully emplacing their four water-cooled Brownings, it’s unlikely anyone thought they were about to provide the definitive answer to that most desperate of questions: How many able-bodied U.S. Marines does it take to hold a hill against 2,000 desperate and motivated attackers?

The Japanese Army had not failed in an attempt to seize any major objective since the Russo-Japanese War of 1905. Their commanders certainly did not expect the war to be lost on some God-forsaken jungle ridge manned by one thin line of Yanks in khaki in October of 1942. ...

..the American forces had so little to work with that Paige’s men would have only the four 30-caliber Brownings to defend the one ridge through which the Japanese opted to launch their final assault against Henderson Field, that fateful night of Oct. 25.

By the time the night was over, “The 29th (Japanese) Infantry Regiment has lost 553 killed or missing and 479 wounded among its 2,554 men,” historian Lippman reports. “The 16th (Japanese) Regiment’s losses are uncounted, but the 164th’s burial parties handle 975 Japanese bodies. ... The American estimate of 2,200 Japanese dead is probably too low.”

Among the 90 American dead and wounded that night were all the men in Mitchell Paige’s platoon. Every one. As the night wore on, Paige moved up and down his line, pulling his dead and wounded comrades back into their foxholes and firing a few bursts from each of the four Brownings in turn, convincing the Japanese forces down the hill that the positions were still manned.

The citation for Paige’s Congressional Medal of Honor picks up the tale: “When the enemy broke through the line directly in front of his position, P/Sgt. Paige, commanding a machinegun section with fearless determination, continued to direct the fire of his gunners until all his men were either killed or wounded. Alone, against the deadly hail of Japanese shells, he fought with his gun and when it was destroyed, took over another, moving from gun to gun, never ceasing his withering fire.”

In the end, Sgt. Paige picked up the last of the 40-pound, belt-fed Brownings — the same design which John Moses Browning famously fired for a continuous 25 minutes until it ran out of ammunition at its first U.S. Army trial — and did something for which the weapon was never designed. Sgt. Paige walked down the hill toward the place where he could hear the last Japanese survivors rallying to move around his flank, the gun cradled under his arm, firing as he went.

The weapon did not fail.

Coming up at dawn, battalion executive officer Major Odell M. Conoley first discovered the answer to our question: How many able-bodied Marines does it take to hold a hill against two regiments of motivated, combat-hardened infantrymen who have never known defeat?

On a hill where the bodies were piled like cordwood, Mitchell Paige alone sat upright behind his 30-caliber Browning, waiting to see what the dawn would bring.

One hill: one Marine.

Admiral Bull Halsey himself broke a stern War College edict — the one against committing capital ships in restricted waters. Gambling the future of the cut-off troops on Guadalcanal on one final roll of the dice, Halsey dispatched into the Slot his two remaining fast battleships, the USS South Dakota and the USS Washington, escorted by the only four destroyers with enough fuel in their bunkers to get them there and back.

In command of the 28-knot battlewagons was the right man at the right pla4ce, gunnery expert Rear Adm. Willis A. “Ching Chong China” Lee. Lee’s flag flew aboard the Washington, in turn commanded by Captain Glenn Davis.

Lee was a nut for gunnery drills. “He tested every gunnery-book rule with exercises,” Lippman writes, “and ordered gunnery drills under odd conditions — turret firing with relief crews, anything that might simulate the freakishness of battle.”

As it turned out, the American destroyers need not have worried about carrying enough fuel to get home. By 11 p.m. on Nov. 13, outnumbered better than three-to-one by a massive Japanese task force driving down from the northwest, every one of the four American destroyers had been shot up, sunk, or set aflame, while the South Dakota — known throughout the fleet as a jinx ship — managed to damage some lesser Japanese vessels but continued to be plagued with electrical and fire control problems.

“Washington was now the only intact ship left in the force,” Lippman writes. “In fact, at that moment Washington was the entire U.S. Pacific Fleet. She was the only barrier between (Admiral) Kondo’s ships and Guadalcanal. If this one ship did not stop 14 Japanese ships right then and there, America might lose the war. ...

On Washington’s bridge, Lieutenant Ray Hunter still had the conn. He had just heard that South Dakota had gone off the air and had seen (destroyers) Walke and Preston “blow sky high.” Dead ahead lay their burning wreckage, while hundreds of men were swimming in the water and Japanese ships were racing in.

“Hunter had to do something. The course he took now could decide the war. ‘Come left,’ he said, and Washington straightened out on a course parallel to the one on which she (had been) steaming. Washington’s rudder change put the burning destroyers between her and the enemy, preventing her from being silhouetted by their fires.

“The move made the Japanese momentarily cease fire. Lacking radar, they could not spot Washington behind the fires. ...

“Meanwhile, Washington raced through burning seas. Everyone could see dozens of men in the water clinging to floating wreckage. Flag Lieutenant Raymond Thompson said, “Seeing that burning, sinking ship as it passed so close aboard, and realizing that there was nothing I, or anyone, could do about it, was a devastating experience.’

“Commander Ayrault, Washington’s executive officer, clambered down ladders, ran to Bart Stoodley’s damage-control post, and ordered Stoodley to cut loose life rafts. That saved a lot of lives. But the men in the water had some fight left in them. One was heard to scream, ‘Get after them, Washington!’ ”

Sacrificing their ships by maneuvering into the path of torpedoes intended for the Washington, the captains of the American destroyers had given China Lee one final chance. The Washington was fast, undamaged, and bristling with 16-inch guns. And, thanks to Lt. Hunter’s course change, she was also now invisible to the enemy.

Blinded by the smoke and flames, the Japanese battleship Kirishima turned on her searchlights, illuminating the helpless South Dakota, and opened fire. Finally, standing out in the darkness, Lee and Davis could positively identify an enemy target.

The Washington’s main batteries opened fire at 12 midnight precisely. Her new SG radar fire control system worked perfectly. Between midnight and 12:07 a.m., Nov. 14, the “last ship in the U.S. Pacific Fleet” stunned the battleship Kirishima with 75, 16-inch shells. For those aboard the Kirishima, it rained steel.

In seven minutes, the Japanese battleship was reduced to a funeral pyre. She went down at 3:25 a.m., the first enemy sunk by an American battleship since the Spanish-American War. Stunned, the remaining Japanese ships withdrew. Within days, Yamamoto and his staff reviewed their mounting losses and recommended the unthinkable to the emperor — withdrawal from Guadalcanal.

But who remembers, today, how close-run a thing it was — the ridge held by a single Marine, the battle won by the last American ship?

In the autumn of 1942.

Via the Barrister.

Earlier “Ching” Lee posting.

Rear Admiral Willis A. Lee, Jr., 1888-1945

2007 Admiral Lee Memorial Speech delivered recently to the United States Naval Academy Rifle Team by Floyd Houston, USMC (ret.) at Lee’s graveside.

Please stand at ease…
• “Four years together by the bay,
where Severn joins the tide.
• Then by the service called away
we’re scattered far and wide.
• But still when two or three shall meet
and old tales be retold –
• from low to highest in the Fleet
we’ll pledge the Blue and Gold.”

You all recognize this refrain from our alma matter. In three weeks I’ll be getting together with my classmates to celebrate our 30th. This refrain hits the nail squarely on the head in terms of what will be happening there.

One enduring lesson I’ve learned is that leadership should never be confused with being appointed to any particular position. In my opinion Webster’s incorrectly lists leadership as a noun. It’s not – its really a verb. Leadership is an action involving three parts, each of which we pray our appointed leaders, especially in wartime, are capable. One, Leaders simply do the right thing. Two, they do it for the right reasons. Three, and most importantly, they do it at the right times.

What is the “right thing?” What are the right reasons? How do you tell when it is the right time? With any luck, we’ll cover some of that today.

Our vehicle is an old tale that requires re-telling – honoring the career of a man named Willis Augustus Lee, Jr. Although Lee was a Midshipman one hundred years ago, his exploits still serve as an inspiration. We have a direct connection to him and he to us – through his lifetime of leadership.

Born 11 May 1888, Willis Lee grew up in Owenton, Kentucky and his family was related to the Lees of Virginia. He was appointed to the US Naval Academy in 1904 at the age of 16, and already had a reputation as a good shot at the time he entered the academy. He was a star athlete on the Rifle Team. He prepared himself so thoroughly as an athlete that when given the opportunity to participate in the US National Rifle and Pistol Championships one hundred years ago in 1907, he became the only American ever to win both the US National High Power Rifle and Pistol Championships in the same year and he did it with a borrowed pistol! He did the right thing in preparing himself mentally and physically for high-level competition. He did it for the right reasons – because he was a Naval Academy Team shooter and his individual scores added to or detracted from his team’s performance. His timing was impeccable as he peaked at the National Championships. He also lived a life like most Midshipmen, being noted for drawing cartoons for the LUCKY BAG, getting put on report, and eventually graduating in the middle of his class in June 1908.

Lee was known throughout his life for his self-confidence, his analytical ability, his genuine modesty, for the twinkle in his eye, a wry sense of humor, and his kindness to subordinates. He was never known to brag of his own exploits, although he could have told some amazing sea stories…

For example, in April 1914 the whole world was in turmoil and World War One was about to break out. The Navy and Marine Corps were ordered to occupy Vera Cruz, Mexico to improve the stability of the government. As a Company Commander of the battleship New Hampshire’s landing force, his men took fire. He borrowed a rifle, dialed in his long range zero, assumed a textbook sitting position out in the open, drew fire as was necessary to locate the muzzle flashes from rooftops further inland, and dispatched three of the snipers at long range.
It sort of gives new meaning to a finals competition or a “guts match” doesn’t it?

During the summer of 1920, then LCDR Lee was a member of the U.S. Olympic rifle team that competed in Antwerp, Belgium. He was the high medal winner of those games, taking home five gold medals, one silver medal, and one bronze medal – an accomplishment that made him the Michael Phelps of his time. Being an intense competitor in high-level competition has crossover value as you live out your lives of leadership and service. By that I mean specifically that as pilots, during emergencies, you will react exactly as well as you trained, a “man overboard” on your bridge watch will go as smoothly as you’ve mastered the “man overboard drill”, and ground combat goes exactly as well as you’ve trained. There are no nerves, no second thoughts, it just happens EXACTLY as well as you’ve trained beforehand. All of you will experience this. Most of you will agree with me later. Some of you, the unlucky or the ones who didn’t put in the training will die and worse yet, you will probably take good folks with you.

Olympic fame notwithstanding, Admiral Lee was expected to serve with the fleet and serve he did. He sailed on the cruiser New Orleans, the gunboat Helena, the battleship Idaho twice, and the battleship New Hampshire. He also served on the destroyers O’Brien and Lea, and tender Anteres.

He did shore tours when assigned, even though he preferred sea duty, and met his wife Mabelle of Rock Island, Illinois during one such tour.

He was XO of the tender Bushnell and the battleship Pennsylvania. He commanded the destroyers Lardner and Preston, the cruiser Concord, and was widely regarded as an expert in ship handling, gunnery, and surface tactics. Just prior to the war he was assigned as the Assistant Chief of Staff for Fleet Readiness. In this position he immersed himself in learning and applying radar technology. He would later use that self training in high stakes combat.

Early in World War Two, he commanded Battleship Division 6, with his flag onboard the battleship Washington. He was a senior leader for America’s greatest generation as they left the farms, factories, and schoolhouses of this great nation to go out and save the world.

By mid-November 1942, the situation in the Solomon Islands was critical. The Japanese had swept virtually undefeated across the Pacific. The Americans, who had hastily landed the 1st Marine Division on the strategic Island of Guadalcanal in August, were now down to one aircraft carrier—Enterprise—after the loss of Wasp in September and Hornet in October. Japanese surface units were subjecting the Marines’ on Guadalcanal to heavy bombardments while landing supplies and reinforcements with disturbing regularity. The Japanese, based on their mastery of night surface gunnery and their superb torpedoes, tended to make their moves at night, while Allied planes controlled the local skies during the day. Night naval combat off Guadalcanal was a disaster for the US. Efforts to halt the Tokyo Express cost so many US ships that the offshore waters became known as Iron Bottom Sound. In fact, the very night before Admiral Lee was sent into the breech, two Navy flag officers along with 700 of their men perished in combat there.

The situation boiled to a crisis as Japanese Admiral Kondo led the Tokyo Express with his flag on the battleship Kirishima, escorting a convoy of 8,000 fresh troops with orders to land and wipe out the beleaguered US Marines ashore, sink any remaining American Naval Vessels, bomb the Marine airstrip off the face of the map, and return north by early morning on 15 November. In addition to the battleship Kirishima, he had two heavy cruisers, one light cruiser, and six destroyers all of whom had steamed and fought and triumphed together as a well-oiled team.

Unwilling to risk his only remaining carrier, Admiral Halsey, played his last trump card, two fast battleships located 300 miles south of Guadalcanal under Willis Lee. In contrast to Admiral Kondo, Halsey ordered Lee to command a pick-up team, warning him to be ready for a flank-speed run north to Guadalcanal. The brand new fast battleship South Dakota was fresh from the shipyard and not fully prepared. Of the four US destroyers that were selected as escorts for the two battleships, none had ever operated together before as a team. They were chosen simply because they had the most remaining fuel in their tanks. All were of different classes and from different divisions. On the battleship Washington, however, Lee had the advantage of having trained this ship and this crew since the early in the war – just the sort of training top rifle competitors conduct to prepare for high-level competitions – what if’s, tactics, gun drills, aiming practice, new radar-directed firing, and lots of target practice. As Lee’s ships sped through the dark waters of Iron-bottom Sound, his radio operators heard American radio traffic. PT-boats were reporting Lee’s moves in plain English and they swung in to attack– thinking Lee’s ships were more Japanese. Using his Naval Academy nickname to identify himself, he personally radioed to the PT boats and to General Vandegrift ashore, “Stand aside, this is Ching Lee, I’m coming through.”

Just before midnight the actual American and Japanese forces DID engage, destroyers first – and sadly, as is oft the case with pick-up teams, they lacked night training and cohesion. Destroyer Preston sunk quickly at 2336. Destroyer Gwin was hit at about the same time Preston went down. At 2338, the destroyer Walke took a torpedo in her magazine, killing close to a hundred. Another torpedo blasted off the destroyer Benham’s bow. All four of Lee’s destroyers were now out of the fight. He was down to his battleships. Washington found the Japanese destroyer Ayanami and sunk her. Then, at very the height of the pitched fight, the new battleship South Dakota lost electrical power. Inadequate pre-combat engineering training was the likely culprit. None-the-less, radar, fire control, turret motors, ammunition hoists, radios—everything went out. Admiral Lee’s Battleship Washington was now the only intact ship left in the force. In fact, at that moment, Washington was the entire U.S. Pacific Fleet. She was the only barrier between Kondo’s ships and Guadalcanal. If this one ship did not stop 14 Japanese ships right then and there, America might lose the war.

Lee turned Washington so the burning destroyers were between himself and the Japanese, effectively negating the superior Japanese night optics and torpedoes. As he sailed by, they cut free life rafts on Washington’s starboard side – there were literally hundreds of men in the water. Washington crewmen reported hearing cheers from the survivors in the oily water urging Washington forward. At this point Kirishima flashed its spotlight to target the helpless South Dakota and in so doing, revealed herself briefly to the absolute master of guts matches, Willis Lee. The Japanese ship was 8,400 yards away on the starboard beam. Kirishima and Washington exchanged fire. The men who trained and fought under Olympic champion Willis A. Lee later said, “Fire control and battery functioned as smoothly as though she [we] were engaged in a well-rehearsed target practice.” In short order nine 16-inch and forty 5-inch rounds struck Kirishima. The ship sank shortly after. Admiral Kondo, stunned, turned his still superior force around. Lee backed Washington off slightly, hoping to keep Kondo literally in the dark about the fact that only Washington remained. As dawn broke, US aviation wiped out the transports and most of the ground reinforcements. Lee’s audacity and Washington’s performance under his leadership had prevailed against all odds. FDR proclaimed it one of the great naval battles of the war. The truth of the matter was that Lee won that fight during pre-combat training both of himself and of Washington.

For his actions that night, Olympic Champion Willis A. Lee was decorated with this nation’s second highest award for valor – the Navy Cross. Tragically, Admiral Lee died of a heart attack shortly after VJ Day. At his funeral right here on this very spot in 1945, Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal called Lee “the savior of Guadalcanal.” How do you learn how to perform leadership under such pressure?

It starts in the crucible of Bancroft Hall. It is hardened in the discipline necessary to make this team, to perform in intercollegiate and national competition. It is flexed in odd places from the bridges of ships to urban combat while young. It is polished in Olympic competition and tested in life and death struggle in positions of great responsibility.

Just like Lee in 1904, you have accepted an appointment in the US Naval Service as a Midshipman. It’s a noun – a name implying leadership. Leadership, as exercised by Willis Lee was a series of actions he executed regularly throughout a long career – doing the right things, for the right reasons, at the right times. When you execute your daily schedule, is leadership an action YOU perform regularly through attention to detail, dedication to your team, through living an honest, decent, and humble life? Or like some, do you glide along pulling your oar only just hard enough to get by? Each of us visualize ourselves like Admiral Lee here with National Championship titles, Olympic medals, and battlefield prowess, but what are you doing every day to prepare yourself for the high stakes competitions which are sure to come? I invite each and every one of you here today to look at this grave, know that you are standing on the shoulders of the giants, and to dedicate yourselves to a life that is worthy of it.

Thank you.

A touching tribute to US WWII veterans.

11:30 video.

Reva Bhalla, director of geopolitical analysis at Stratfor, offers the perspective of a dove and insider on the recent US-Iran talks.

Pat Dollard, however, takes a considerably more hawkish perspective in interpreting exactly what brought Iran to the negotiating table.

Watching the pundits discuss our historic meeting with Iran, you would have mostly heard despair at the notion that we have no leverage in these talks, and so therefor why would Iran give on anything? Why would they stop waging war against us in iraq if they have nothing to fear? To all the experts in the media, the whole thing seemed like some grand puzzlement. Was it just an attempt to appease the administration’s domestic critics who have been chiding it for not engaging in diplomacy ( a vaguery if there ever was one ) with the world’s top terrorist? No one you heard from could really quite grasp what was going on.

For some reason, no one told you that just 5 days before Monday’s talks, an entire floating army, with nearly 20,000 men, comprising the world’s largest naval strike force, led by the USS Nimitz and the USS Stennis, and also comprising the largest U.S. Naval armada in the Persian Gulf since 2003, came floating up unnanounced through the Straight of Hormuz, and rested right on Iran’s back doorstep, guns pointed at them. The demonstration of leverage was clear. And it also came on the exact date of the expiration of the 60 day grace period the U.N. had granted Iran.

And it came just a few weeks after Vice President Dick Cheney had swept through the region and delivered a very clear and pointed message to the Saudi King Abdullah and others: George Bush has unequivocally decided to attack Iran’s nuclear, military and economic infrastructure if they do not abandon their drive for military nuclear capability. Plain and simple. Iran heard the message as well, and although a lack of leverage may seem clear to America’s retired military tv talking heads, it is not so clear to the government in Tehran.

The message to both Iran and Syria is that if the talks in Baghdad fail, the military option is ready to go.

The US warships entering

Arabian Sea

Hat tip to Charles Johnson.

News sources are reporting that the US Navy exchanged gunfire with pirates yesterday off the coat of Somalia, ultimately capturing twelve. A Dutch medical team is being flown in to treat the wounded pirates.

They used to deal with piracy more sternly and expeditiously.