Retro Game Timewarp

In another installment of this posting (perhaps this will become a regular series), we go back in time to the late 1980s, when the Commodore 64 was one of the kings of the home computer market. I was offered my uncle's machine to borrow, and we had it for several years until my folks decided to buy our own setup. I taught myself to program in BASIC on that computer (in addition to the playing around I did on the Apple IIs we had at school). But, more than that, it became my first video gaming machine. At 10 years old, the C64 was a neverending source of amazement and wonder.

There were many notable games that I played on the C64 during the 6 years we owned it (and upgraded to our first PC), and I hope to touch on some of them as this series progresses. One of the most important of these titles, and perhaps the one that strongly ignited my interest in the U.S. Navy, was Electronic Arts' Strike Fleet. This was a game that thrusted you directly into a World War III with the Soviet Navy - and you were in command of the fleet that was to stop them! You began in one ship, learning how to control the various aspects of the game's functionality. Later, the size of your fleet grew and with it, your capabilities (and strength of your adversaries). Though the game was an exercise in micromanagement, I learned the basics of our modern fleet through exposure to this game.

I strongly believe that this game helped me, in some small way, through my Plebe Year at the Naval Academy - I showed up already knowing the answers to many of the factoids that young freshmen are constantly quizzed on.

Lots of great memories here! Sail safe.

So...now what happens?

This article was published this morning:

S.Korean warship 'hit by N.Korean torpedo'

SEOUL (AFP) – South Korea's military believes that a North Korean submarine launched a torpedo attack to sink a South Korean warship last month near their disputed sea border, the Yonhap news agency said on Thursday.
The assessment was reported to the office of President Lee Myung-Bak and the defence ministry immediately after the ship sank last month, an unnamed senior military source told Yonhap.
"It's our military intelligence's assessment that North Korean submarines attacked the ship with a heavy torpedo," the source said, adding that the subs were armed with torpedoes with 200-kilogram (440-pound) warheads.
"Since February last year, North Korea has strengthened training that showed the possibility of it launching a guerilla warfare-style provocation, rather than a skirmish."
The South's military intelligence command had also alerted the navy ahead of the March 26 sinking of the Cheonan that North Korea was preparing an attack, Yonhap said.
The South's defence ministry refused to comment on the report.
Seoul has so far refrained from directly accusing Pyongyang and said only that an "external explosion" was the most likely cause of the disaster which cost the lives of 46 sailors.
Pyongyang has denied it was responsible.
South Korean Defence Minister Kim Tae-Young has already raised the possibility that a mine or torpedo may have sunk the ship, following deadly naval clashes in 1999 and 2002 and a November firefight.
The November incident left a North Korean patrol boat in flames and local media reports said one North Korean sailor was killed and three wounded.
The North has vowed "merciless" military action to protect what it sees as its Yellow Sea border.
South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper meanwhile quoted defectors as saying that North Korea had formed suicide attack squads known as "human torpedoes" in its navy.
It said the North's navy operates a brigade of suicide attack squads, which have many mini-submarines capable of carrying torpedoes or floating mines.

I hate to say it, but I called it. So then, what is the ROK's next move? Retaliation? Rhetoric? Nothing? What say you? Is the 2nd Korean War upon us?

No way anything but a weapon did that

So, South Korea just raised the stern section of the corvette that sunk under mysterious circumstances about three weeks ago. Looking at the raw video and photos that are now available on the web, it's clear that this ship broke in two. There are few things that can cause a ship's back to be broken enough like that - and two of them are torpedoes and mines. I highly doubt that anything internal to the ship could cause this kind of damage.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and speculate...that this was likely the result of the ship hitting a mine or being struck by a torpedo (in which case, we have a deliberate attack). Either way, it is bad all-around.

Do you think this was deliberate?

Warship Naming Epic Fail

Okay, this morning I am going to put on my Navy hat and respond to some news. Serving as a naval officer for nine years left me with a great knowledge of Naval customs and traditions; a personal interest in naval history (that dates to long before I entered the U.S. Naval Academy) in general only serves to magnify this. Thus, for most of my life, I have had a great interest in the Navy and its history, and naval affairs in general.

Now, on to the meat of this post: this morning, a major Navy-focused news site proffered this story: http://www.navytimes.com/news/2010/04/navy_murtha_gator_041310w/

The majority of the Navy blogosphere has already responded to this, and the overall opinion seems to be negative. I could not agree more with them! Why all the fuss about naming a warship? Because this is a decades-old issue that always seems to recur. for inexplicably political reasons alone. The LPD 17 class of amphibious ships is new to the fleet; so far, each ship has been named for a U.S. city. Now, the revelation that the latest ship will be named after a recently deceased member of the House of Representatives that was not the strongest advocate of the military (even though he was the chair of the House defense appropriations subcommittee - the main reason this is happening in the first place).

In the past, the Navy stuck to a generally concrete convention for the assignment of names to its ships. Aircraft carriers were names for famous battles; cruisers for U.S. cities; submarines for maritime fauna; destroyers for naval heroes and other persons of great importance in Navy history. Somewhere around the late 1960s, sporadic exceptions to these conventions began occurring (USS GLENARD P. LIPSCOMB; USS HYMAN G. RICKOVER; USS THOMAS S. GATES; and so on). This USS JOHN MURTHA, however, is one of the worst names ever conceived for a warship - in ten years, when the warship has been in active service, who (aside from the crew assigned to the ship) amongst the general populace will recognize this name?

Please, just pick a naming scheme and stick with it!