Last week I toured the USS Constitution, in Boston Harbor. Launched in 1797, “Old Ironsides” is the oldest commissioned warship afloat.
It’s also the only remaining ship in the US Navy to have sunk an enemy vessel.
Last week I toured the USS Constitution, in Boston Harbor. Launched in 1797, “Old Ironsides” is the oldest commissioned warship afloat.
It’s also the only remaining ship in the US Navy to have sunk an enemy vessel.
Nothing some red pumps can’t fix.
It’s also the only remaining ship in the US Navy to have sunk an enemy vessel.
Not that I doubted Mr.Reynolds but I just had to check that stat. Yup. The USS Simpson shared that distinction, at least from a modern day vessel perspective, but she was retired in 2015.
Seeing as there have been no naval confrontations of any scale since 1945, I don’t think this is much of an issue, and I should hope that 75+ year old warships have all been retired by now.
The US navy has sunk at least one Somali pirate vessel, that I know of.
I’m with you, and why does it indicate the decline and fall of the USA?…open sea warships are pretty much a thing of the past…everything is airborne and guided now…aircraft carriers remain relevant though. Maybe someday again we may have to fight sea vessels if ever a massive deployment from an ancient empire who became rich again from other nations corruption and greed now on it’s final conquest…
The Falklands enter the chat.
BTW, the HMS Victory is the world’s oldest commissioned warship but its hull hasn’t touched sea water in years (and they’re keeping it that way), which is why the USS Constitution can take the distinction of being the world’s oldest commissioned warship still afloat.
Do you mean “afloat”. The H.M.S. Victory is the oldest commissioned warship, but it is not “afloat”. The Admiralty still holds meetings in her. https://www.nmrn.org.uk/hms-victory
It’s a distinction with a difference. The USS Constitution’s crew will occasionally take her out for a sail. HMS Victory is in permanent dry dock. So one is the oldest but doesn’t sail anymore, and the other is the oldest that still can.
US warships have the prefix HMS now? Who knew? I guess I missed the memo explaining that the US lost the revolutionary war.
HMS Victory is a British ship.
I guess it’s not famous enough… /s
Related and funny as he!!
https://twitchy.com/samj-3930/2021/07/16/she-went-there-juanita-broaddrick-uses-the-lefts-very-favorite-anti-trump-talking-point-to-drop-gen-mark-milley-and-rofl/
L – I think the General has been demoted to a less than heroic meme.
Proceeding Under Decline and Fall Category.
Enemies of the People. This is truly where we are headed.
Our Governments in all western Nations, especially in the Canadian Penal Colony and The Associated Canadian Gulags.
Again Poncho Villa had a solution. A wall and a Blindfold.
https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/enemies-of-the-people/
Afloat, yes. HMS VICTORY is older though.
Sad state of affairs, admittedly, but to be fair, the US has not faced a rival sea power in battle for a long, long time. Sinking an Iranian motor boat, even if they did, would hardly count.
Carrier groups were the decisive ships of WW2 and have been effective against noncontending nations ever since but how will they fare in total war against matching navies with modern systems such as strategic EMP weapons, hypersonic missiles, multiple submarines, ABM capacity, electronic jamming, robotic unmanned mini-subs, etc? Are they now weapons of the last wars and essentially floating targets even if the US Navy was not focused on woke and broke? Will the US test this hypothesis in the South China Sea or look the other way over Taiwan? WW3 will likely be (already started?) as biological and cyber in nature? So many questions!
Have you seen the new Battlestar Galactica? Being older and obsolete, she is the only ship not connected to the naval internet and the only one that survives the Cylon attack. I think you’re right. Carriers won’t last an hour. Rail guns in space may be the answer. The new MAD.
What everyone seems to forget about nuBSG is that a) the Galactica was where the Colonial Navy stuck all its useless f*ckups, discipline problems, and incompetent officers that were too politically well-connected to just dishonorably discharge; b) that she ended up the only ship to carry on the legacy of the Twelve Colonies was supposed to be irony; and c) the people aboard completely f*ck it up.
WW3 is well underway, we just don’t want to admit it.
Nobody has a fleet of Cruise/Nuclear Missile armed Nuclear powered Subs like the US has….A MAJOR strike weapon capable platform and one that would be at the forefront of any battle – land or sea.
Canada on the other hand has Sub surface equipment similar in technological state as the Monitor & the Hunleyn in that they sink..and not much else …. our Aircraft not being much better than flying a P39 Airocobra and by God, the entire 65,000 Cdn force be WOKE dontcha know…!!!
A force to be rekoned with eh…?? Fkmegently….
Sadly, West Point isn’t without it’s problems as well. Racked with cheating scandals and other doings tarnishing the “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor” code. The graduating cadet displaying the inside of his hat to the camera which read “Communism will win” was particularly ominous. I know he was relieved of his duties and eventually kicked out but his left wing views were not a closely held secret when he was in Afghanistan and before he was accepted at West Point.
Which either means they’re doing a shitty job of vetting or he had fellow travellers pulling some strings for him.
I think more telling…. The US has not “won” a war since WWII. Stalemate in Korea, losses in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. This suggests that there is not a single person in today’s military who has ever been on the winning side in a war. No wonder there is a huge leadership void!
Grenada was a success.
Well, Grenada wasn’t much of what you would call a “war”.
As were Desert Storm and the second Iraq war until they undid every success.
And Panama.
Paul
Sorry, I don’t buy that whatsoever.
When the ROE is one with your hands tied behind your back while being blindfolded, and you are limited in what you can project on the battlefield…its no wonder. Vietnam could have been easily won – 1 small tactical nuke on Hanoi..?? Game over. The same goes for Korea – they shoulda let McArthur cross the Yalu and kick Mao’s gang of assholes right back to Manchuria.
WAR is 100% full on or you’re simply not being serious about winning and its all about the Military Industrial Complex getting daily Orders for Materiel…?? sound familiar.?
Yep.
I agree with you! What I meant to suggest was not that the US wasn’t capable, but that their leadership is so poor. They are terrified of a guy who paints his face and wears buffalo horns – that this person presents the biggest threat since the Civil War!
So, here are a set of trivia questions to use with this little factoid..
1. Of the 250 “active” ships in commission by the US Navy, how many have sunk an enemy vessel? [Just one]
2. Name the last enemy vessel that was sunk by an active ship in commission by the US Navy? [HMS Guerriere, August, 1812]
3. Name the currently active commissioned US Navy vessel that sunk that ship. [USS Constitution, of course]
Yeah they really pooched it when they let the USS Enterprise (CV-6) get turned into razor blades. Shoulda kept it as a museum ship. Warts and all.
For what it’s worth I think this is a feature not a bug.