The Briefing Room
General Category => Military/Defense News => Military History => Topic started by: rangerrebew on April 04, 2020, 05:48:33 pm
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April 4, 2020
Nuclear-Aircraft Carrier Rams A Thirteen-Mile-Long Rock. Oh. No.
Catastrophe.
by Steve Weintz
Key point: The impact of a quarter-mile-long nuclear-powered object with a thirteen-mile-long solid rock is prodigious.
Spend some time with Google Earth, an atlas or a globe and you will see that California, for peoples used to the Atlantic, was indeed the far side of the world well into the nineteenth century. What is now one of the most populated, navalized coastlines on Earth remained poorly known even to mariners.
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Somehow such mystery lingers, for once the world’s most powerful warship nearly wrecked herself upon a drowned island one hundred miles west of San Diego. Chris Dixon, who masterfully chronicled the origin of giant-wave surfing in his 2011 book Ghost Wave, surfaced this sea story of the USS Enterprise’s 1985 encounter with the Cortes Bank, where rock, water and wind collide to form sea monsters.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/nuclear-aircraft-carrier-rams-thirteen-mile-long-rock-oh-no-140957
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Cortes Bank is a well known Big Wave surfing location
Navy ships, Fishing boats, have the best GPS in the world.
Therefore the competency of our military was obviously at fault.
Weren't they ramming other vessels last year of Japan?
Maybe too busy firing off emails, to journalists?
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This collision happened in 1985. While GPS was in operation then, its resolution wasn't what it now is. That said,
He had a lot on his mind. The ORE involved simulated multiple airstrikes on defended targets, and the ship needed to keep to the wind to get the planes launched and landed swiftly. The navigator alerted him to the proximity of Cortes Bank and plotted a course correction. At that Captain Leuschner was distracted by what turned out to be a false report of a gunman below decks. During the precious moments when communications and awareness were tied up, no one noticed the carrier’s approach to the bank.
The impact of a quarter-mile-long nuclear-powered object with a thirteen-mile-long solid rock is prodigious. The drowned island tore a sixty-foot-long gash in the side of the Enterprise’s torpedo-resistant hull. Three of the four giant propellers were totaled and the port keel gone.
It seems odd to me that only the captain could alter course when urgent, but I'm a life-long civilian.
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Cortes Bank is a well known Big Wave surfing location
Navy ships, Fishing boats, have the best GPS in the world.
Therefore the competency of our military was obviously at fault.
Weren't they ramming other vessels last year of Japan?
Maybe too busy firing off emails, to journalists?
As a big wave spot Cortes was pretty much unknown until the 90s & beyond. But you're right, by '85 it was well charted.
It's one scary place for surfing. Couldn't pay me to even get in the water out there, at any age.
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Big wave surfing has fascinated me since my own surfing days.
There are some great big wave vids. Following has the science too.
48 minutes; Oahu, Maui, Mavericks, Cortes
Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFrA6MoT4DM#)