Category: Navy

A Navy pilot took it upon himself to decorate the sky over Okanogan County, Washington with his contrails. It didn’t go over well with folks at his duty station on Whidbey Island, according to The Spokesman-Review;

The Naval Air Station in Whidbey Island has claimed responsibility for the drawing, calling it “unacceptable” and “of zero training value.”

The base’s public affairs office on Friday referred questions to the Navy’s Pacific Fleet headquarters in San Diego, where Lt. Cmdr. Leslie Hubbell said the crew involved in the sky-drawing would be held accountable.

Hubbell said an investigation has been launched, although it’s not clear who in the chain of command will make the final decision on disciplinary action. She declined to speculate on whether the crew members involved could be discharged.

Hubbell said the aircraft involved was an EA-18G Growler from the VAQ-130 Electronic Attack Squadron based at Whidbey Island, on a “routine training” flight. The highly maneuverable plane is a cousin of the F/A-18 Super Hornet, outfitted with radar and communication jamming equipment.

Locals generally took it as the joke that it was intended to be;

Ramone Duran said he was running errands when he looked up and saw what he thought looked like the start of someone trying to draw a male member with jet contrails.

About five minutes later, Duran said, the drawing was complete.

“After it made the circles at the bottom, I knew what it was and started laughing,” Duran said. “It was pretty funny to see that. You don’t expect to see something like that.”

Misty Waugh, a server and bartender at The Club, said she wasn’t aware of the drawing until her 12-year-old son texted her a picture.

“I thought it was pretty funny, and so did he” she said. “A lot of people have been talking about it.”

Y’all thought it was funny, too, since about fifty of you sent me links last night. The Pentagon isn’t known for it’s sense of humor, though.

We wrote about Senior Chief Clayton Pressley when he was imprisoned for stealing the identities of his subordinates to commit bank fraud last year. Mick sends us a link from Virginian-Pilot which reports that he’s in hot water again;

The charges stem from alleged contract steering and product substitution from May 2014 to November 2014, according to court documents. Investigators said Pressley, then a senior chief petty officer, and his co-conspirators were selling Navy “inert training aids” that were never shipped but marked as delivered.

The fraud involved two Defense Logistics Agency prime vendors, identified in court documents as Firm D and Firm V, and a Tucson, Ariz.,-based business, identified as Firm G, that provided “logistical support” to the government.

The documents reference four members of the conspiracy, including Pressley. The others were not named, but the first was the CEO of Firm G, the second a sales representative at Firm D and the third a Navy officer who had authority to make purchases for his unit.

The latest charges are that he steered $1.6 million in government contracts into his own firm’s accounts.

Pressley and his friends found a way to corrupt the system for personal gain, the documents said. The Navy officer would order inert training aids that were routinely damaged or destroyed from the two prime vendors. They, in turn, would contract with Firm G, thanks to three friendly sales representatives – one of whom was getting kickbacks.

The documents don’t describe the training aids, but the term usually refers to replica weapons, bombs and explosives.

Pressley was the chief operating officer of “Firm G”. Well, at least they know where to find him.

Last week we talked about Jennifer Appel and Tasha Fuiava who were rescued by the Navy’s USS Ashland. This week, the US Coast Guard is punching holes in their tale, according to the Seattle Times. The Coast Guard says that they are conducting an investigation and no charges have been brought.

The first problem is that they had an Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB) on board, but that they had never turned it on so they could be rescued.

Also, they say that they survived a storm that the National Weather Service says never happened;

On their first day at sea, May 3, the two U.S. women described running into a fearsome storm that tossed their vessel with 60 mph (97 kph) winds and 30-foot (9-meter) seas for three days, but meteorologists say there was no severe weather anywhere along their route during that time.

After leaving “we got into a Force 11 storm, and it lasted for two nights and three days,” Appel said of the storm they encountered off Oahu. In one of the first signs of trouble, she said she lost her cellphone overboard.

“We were empowered to know that we could withstand the forces of nature,” Appel said. “The boat could withstand the forces of nature.”

But the National Weather Service in Honolulu said no organized storm systems were in or near Hawaii on May 3 or in the days afterward. Archived NASA satellite images confirm there were no tropical storms around Hawaii that day.

The two had only known each other for a week when they decided to take off on their little journey.

Like I said before, I’m glad the dogs are OK.

Bobo sends us a link to the Navy Times which reports that Command Master Chief Richard Penny, the command master chief of the Camp Pendleton-based Assault Craft Unit 5, was fired last week. I guess the Navy takes it’s golf courses seriously;

The investigation centered around allegations that sailors who were already in the chiefs mess — known as “genuine chief petty officers” —and who were leading the initiation season activities damaged a golf course‘s greens by spraying the grounds with silly string and filling the holes with shaving cream, a senior Navy source familiar with the matter told Navy Times.

The hijinks may have killed some of the grass, so the golf course manager reported the incident to the Navy command, according to the Navy source familiar with the incident who spoke to Navy Times on condition of anonymity.

Penny was present briefly at the start of the event but was not there when the alleged misconduct occurred, according to Lt. Laura Price, a spokesperson for Expeditionary Strike Group 3, the command conducting the investigations.

According to Stars & Stripes, Taiwanese fishermen spotted Jennifer Appel and Tasha Fuiava and their dogs Zeus and Valentine adrift about 900 miles south of Japan. The fishermen alerted the US Navy which sent USS ASHLAND to the rescue;

“Thank god we’ve been rescued,” was Appel’s first thought when she saw the American sailors approaching her stricken craft in a small boat launched from the Ashland Thursday morning.

“They saved our lives,” she said, according to a Navy statement about the rescue. “The pride and smiles we had when we saw [the Navy] on the horizon was pure relief.”

Their engine conked out on the ladies in late May and they were blown off-course trying to complete their journey with sails.

I’m glad the dogs are OK.

MCPO reminds us that on 13 October 1775, the Continental Congress authorized the purchase of two vessels to be armed for a cruise against British merchant ships; this resolution created the Continental Navy and is considered the first establishment of the U.S. Navy.

He also sends this instructional video;

The first major naval engagement of the new country was at Valcour Island in Lake Chaplain on October 11, 1776 when Benedict Arnold faced off with the British fleet and delayed them enough that their plans to take Fort Ticonderoga and Crown Point back were delayed for a year. Of course, Arnold’s fleet, which the colonists had spent the entire summer building was completely destroyed in the endeavor.