Just over a year ago, retired Vice Adm. Mike Miller collected $100 each from the chief of naval operations and the Navy secretary as he handed over command of the Naval Academy. In his remarks, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus told the crowd at Alumni Hall that he and Adm. Jon Greenert had made a bet four years earlier with Miller — a ’74 academy grad — that he wouldn’t last a second tour at the Naval Academy without getting in trouble. “… I think the main thing we share is the astonishment of his classmates and my shipmates from long ago…
Browsing: 7th Fleet
Well, it’s certainly not a service offered at the ship’s barber shop. Eager to maintain the command’s high grooming standards during its stay in Brisbane, Australia, sailors flocked to a local barber shop where the hair dressers were a tad under-dressed. Jasmine Robson, owner and director of Barber Babes in downtown Brisbane, opened the topless hair cuttery in 2013 as part of her adult entertainment complex Grosvenor on George. When the aircraft carrier George Washington visited in 2013, her business was inundated with sailors looking for a haircut with a view, and she wasn’t prepared. “When the last carrier visited,…
It can hold 14 helicopters. It’s more than 800 feet long. It has a very flat top: It’s Japan’s largest warship since World War II — unveiled on the 68th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. But it’s not a carrier. The destroyer Izumo cost $1.2 billion and goes public amid territorial clashes between China and Japan (China, for its part, appears to be always ready). Japanese officials insist the Aug. 6 unveiling was coincidental and had more to do with favorable ocean tides than World War II history, according to this AFP report. They also insist the ship…
The hospital ship Mercy got a unique recognition last month when the National Conflict Resolution Center gave the ship its National Peacemaker Award for bringing medical and humanitarian aid overseas, including annual “Pacific Partnership” missions in 2008, 2010 and 2012. It was the first time the San Diego-based center gave the award to a “thing” and not a person. “The amount of humanitarian aid that everybody on the ship provides – really as a team – they really reach out around the world,” Lisa Cole-Jones, the center’s fund development program manager, told us. The ship’s crew was elated. “The more…
It was a sunny, Sunday morning when bombs started raining down on Pearl Harbor 71 years ago today. In the chaos, more than 2,000 service members died, 21 boats sunk to the bottom of the harbor and most of the 394 planes on the island were either damaged or destroyed. Today, the community of those who remember the attack is shrinking. There are fewer than 3,000 survivors of the attack nationwide, and the national Pearl Harbor Survivors Association disbanded Jan. 1, since there were not enough members to keep it together. Most of the population today was not alive for…
Let’s face it: Once you step into a new car – or even a previously-owned vehicle, as used-car dealers say – it’s just not exciting to drive older wheels. Classic rebuilt cars, the exception of course. Trading down just isn’t fun. So we can feel for the sailors and officers of amphibious assault ship Essex, who this spring took the Wasp-class big-deck Bonhomme Richard from their home in San Diego, Calif., and swapped hulls in Japan, where they exchanged ships and even the official Facebook pages with their Sasebo-based counterparts in the Navy’s latest scheduled hull swap. The San Diego-based crew…
Our cover story on newsstands this week focuses on the accidental death of Personnel Specialist 1st Class (SW/AW) Regan Young, who was killed Nov. 23, 2011, aboard the amphibious assault ship Essex. That day, Essex was anchored off Bali, Indonesia, and Young had been sitting beneath a NATO Sea Sparrow launcher all the way aft on the ship, using his cellphone to make some calls before the ship weighed anchor. Around the same time, technicians began maintenance on the aft launcher. But they didn’t post the required safety observer, didn’t sound the warning bell and didn’t follow standard start-up procedures,…
Amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard arrived in Sasebo, Japan, on April 8 for the Navy’s planned “hull swap” this spring with its older sibling, Essex. The BHR, as many call it, left San Diego in February for the cross-Pacific trek, carrying utility craft and about 800 Marines headed to South Korea for bilateral training exercises. The ship stopped in Okinawa, Japan, before heading on course for Sasebo Naval Base, the forward-deployed homeport for 7th Fleet’s amphibious force. While in Sasebo, the San Diego sailors will train with their Essex counterparts before both ships’ skippers exchange command for the official swap and…
It’s getting more jittery in the Pacific. North Korea’s failed launch of a missile April 12 gives them more drive to conduct their next nuclear underground test, if nothing but to show the world that its new leader, Kim Jong Un, is just as tough and threatening as his paternal predecessors, defense analysts say. All that missile rattling, along with China’s growing military might, has heightened insecurities in an already-tense Asia-Pacific. With the U.S. strategy now taking a keener eye on the Pacific, and the brass talking more about ramping up training and deployments around the region, some of the Navy’s…
When temperatures go below freezing, perhaps the last place you’d want to place your lips is anything made of metal. Anyone who’s ever played in a marching or military band for an outdoor performance knows that the show must go on, regardless of Mother Nature’s moods. That’s just what some members of the U.S. 7th Fleet Band did this past weekend, enduring snow and icy conditions to entertain the crowd in Sapporo, Japan. The northern Japan city on Hokkaido island, which hosted the 1972 Winter Olympics, is famous for its annual Sapporo Snow Festival attended by some 2 million visitors who don…
