Ahoy, there! Where did the Navy go?
This morning, I was reading a piece on the front page of The Wall Street Journal about the quiet arm-wrestling match going on between the United States and China over whether we Yanks will maintain naval supremacy in the Pacific (it was a good piece; too bad that WSJ is hiding it behind a pay wall).
That caused me to go take another look at disturbing satellite imagery I saw a day or two ago. Reading Black Ocean, I went to Google Maps just to remind myself of the lay of the land around Pearl Harbor (I used to be able to look down on it from my backyard, which was higher than the roof of the neighbor behind us in Foster Village — you can almost see it at the far left of this photo).
And I’m scrolling around, remembering things that happened here and there — and being surprise to find a bridge to Ford Island (in my day, you had to get there by ferry), when suddenly I realize that something is missing — namely, the United States Navy.
I looked at the hard wharf across the street from the tennis courts that John McCain’s father threw me off of (yes, that really happened), and was shocked. Last time I was there (admittedly, 40 years ago), a glance in that direction would show a tangle of antennae and superstructures of warships, packed along the wharf. Now… nothing. Not one ship.
This, apparently, is it -- a few ships tucked away in Middle Loch.
I started looking everywhere, and finally found about 11 ships tucked away over in Middle Loch, at anchor in twos (eerily like the way the battleships were moored on the opposite side of Ford Island on Dec. 7, 1941). What are they doing there? Hiding from the Chinese?
And that was it, aside from one surface ship and one sub I found over on the side where the main base is. Or was.
I knew the Navy had shrunk since the Cold War, but this was like some kind of post-apocalytic sci-fi thing. Like they’d all just disappeared.
No wonder Iran thinks it can close the Strait of Hormuz, if our bench has gotten this thin…
Maybe Burl can enlighten us… tell us the fleet was out conducting exercises or something that day…
Oh, and you know what else? Maybe, instead of crazy talk about how Obamacare endangers “the very survival of the United States,” some of these people running for president should address the issue of whatever happened to our Navy…
At the very bottom edge of the image, nearly halfway across coming from the left, you see the tennis courts where I had my run-in with Admiral McCain. Across the street should be a tangle of warships moored one or two deep. But there's nothing...
Maybe they’re headed for the Strait of Hormuz?
Maybe that new stealth technology really works.
There aren’t as many ships in the fleet as there were then, they’re more widely scattered, but mainly they spend more time at sea. And the Google image of the harbor IS more empty than usual. I wonder if the navy leaned on Google to erase some ships.
They heard bud say there was too much money being spent on defense so they sold everything for scrap.
Google Earth – from January 2008 – shows a battleship (since retired), a cruiser and five attack subs in addition to the reserve amphibious group anchored off in the distance at Pearl Harbor. It is surprising that Google’s best imagery of the area is five years old.
Interestingly the satellite maps for Seattle and Portland, OR are from August 2011, Denver from May 2011, Houston from March 2011, Columbia from October 2010, Atlanta from October 2011, Chicago (and Pittsburg) from July 2010, New York from June 2011, and Boston from June 2010.
However, Groton, CT is from October 2010, Hampton Roads from April 2011, and San Diego from August 2010. So don’t get too conspiracy theory on the aged view of Pearl Harbor.
By the way, the Pacific Fleet is mostly home-ported on the West Coast. The August 2010 view of San Diego harbor shows 2 carriers, 5 attack subs, 4 cruisers, 12 destroyers, 2 frigates and 7 amphibious ships. That’s a fleet in anyone’s book. It’s pretty cool to skim across a harbor like that in the Google Earth flying view…
Maybe we’re keeping the fleet on the West Coast because of those new carrier-killing missiles the Chinese have developed (from the WSJ story).
And yeah, while I was at lunch after posting this, I got to thinking: Maybe the Navy scattered the ships because they knew they were getting their picture taken by Google that day.
Hey, Burl, can anybody drive out to Ford Island, or do you need military ID? I assume the latter, post-9/11.
In my day, security at Pearl was tight. U.S. Marines at the gates, and in no mood for fooling around with anybody without the proper ID.
Except… one time we went out this back gate, from Pearl toward Hickam (maybe it led straight into Hickam; I’m not sure), and there was a civilian Defense Department guard on the gate. I remember it because he was the father of one of my friends from Radford.
Another question, Burl — what are the ships doing all the way across the harbor from the base?
Is that where they usually are these days?
OK, that was two questions…
Among your many questions are….
Those are the decommissioned reserves…just hanging around until scrapped or sold. Hopefully scrapped or sold and not pressed back into serice.
Hickam and Pearl Harbor are now under one command, essentially the Navy. Security is handled by private contractors (a legacy of the Bush years) and you do need base passes to get onto Ford Island, unless you ride the shuttle bus from the Arizona Memorial/VITPNA site to the museums on Ford Island. I have a car pass and picture ID thanks to my work for the aviation museum.
I was surprised to see no submarines in the sub-base docking facilities in the aerial image. There are always subs there. And there are always ships along the 1010 dock.
Maybe Cheney hid them from Google the way he hid the VP’s residence.
The Middle Loch ships are all mothballed, btw.
Aircraft carriers have been the heart of the fleet for 70 years now; that’s almost twice as long as the battleship’s reign before WWII.
Maybe it is time that America and the Navy start looking beyond a dozen flattops as the solution to all our power projection needs around the globe?