quote:

Originally posted by bcereuss:
4 1/2 years sea duty on an SSBN…it was steak, lobster, and cheesecake 24/7/365!

Ah yes - where 150 men leave on a deployment and 75 couples return.

(j/k of course)

5 deployments across aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships during my 22-year career. it was never as bad as the stories coming out about the Lincoln today. Did it suck? Yes. But we signed up for it and got through it. A friend and retired Master Chief asked us all one day in the early 90's that when you went to the recruiter's office and saw those ships on the wall, what did you think you were going to get?

Pretty long deployment, with no liberty ports of call, almost constantly doing operations in an area not well known for fresh commodities with bad guys hoping to take out the supply ships...tough situation. Is it as bad as the media make it to be; I seriously doubt it. I'm hoping that another group will take up station, and the Abe can sail back to its homeport making as many good liberty ports as permitted. IIRC, one news blurb said they were also going to transition to a new homeport about sixty days from now.

Twenty years from now those sailors will be telling sea stories about how hard core they were on the Abe when the generation following whine that the Amazon Prime delivery drones never make it to whatever armpit they are currently at.

Once again, Never trust the media! Spent a year in Vietnam on the USS Tripoli (LPH) and the USS New Orleans (LPH) in '72 & '73. May have had food I didn't like, such as "Red Death" (Corned Beef), but never any shortage of food. There were times we ran out of fresh fruits, eggs and milk, but those were substituted with canned fruit and powdered milk and eggs.

Mail was spotty at best, but we accepted it. Wife and I started numbering our letters and it wasn't unusual to get #32 one week and then get #26 two weeks later. Letters were the only messaging capability we had. Our racks were canvas tied to metal frames with a 2 inch mattress. None of this caused or appeared to have caused any mental problems. We only had one Man Overboard episode when a drunk Marine fell off the flightdeck while trying to take a piss at 0200.

quote:

Originally posted by RETTOP:
Once again, Never trust the media! Spent a year in Vietnam on the USS Tripoli (LPH) and the USS New Orleans (LPH) in '72 & '73. May have had food I didn't like, such as "Red Death" (Corned Beef), but never any shortage of food. There were times we ran out of fresh fruits, eggs and milk, but those were substituted with canned fruit and powdered milk and eggs.

Mail was spotty at best, but we accepted it. Wife and I started numbering our letters and it wasn't unusual to get #32 one week and then get #26 two weeks later. Letters were the only messaging capability we had. Our racks were canvas tied to metal frames with a 2 inch mattress. None of this caused or appeared to have caused any mental problems. We only had one Man Overboard episode when a drunk Marine fell off the flightdeck while trying to take a piss at 0200.

Serious question…was alcohol allowed on board?

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Originally posted by OttoSig:

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:

quote:

Originally posted by OttoSig:
Don’t even get me started about moms calling when their kids cry on phone calls at boot camp.

Hey, that's on you, Otto...

You forgot to use Recruit Brayden Makinleigh's preferred pronouns, and to soften your voice when addressing them, and to utilize inclusive language, and to bookend any criticism with a compliment sandwich, and to provide a trigger warning before you begin speaking, and most importantly to ensure they had sufficient cookies and milk before nap time.

Honestly, man. Do better.

You’re not far off! I pick up another division Wednesday, let’s see how soft these are.

If you haven’t had a congressional inquest into why you are beating recruits, you aren’t trying hard enough. After my 2nd one, I started having to include the appropriate way to explain boot camp to mommy in my P-1 day data dump.

My father was career navy, WWII vet aboard the Ranger. His only comment about the food was, he hated being on alert because the galley was shut down and the crew was served spam sandwiches. It happened so much, he refused to eat spam after he was assigned to base duty.

One thing that's much more prevalent with today's Navy than prior generations is the availability of food stuffs outside of the galley. There's always been geedunk and poggy-bait (junk food) available however, larger ships have space in the ship store for more microwaved or cup noodles type food items; isn't uncommon to find a few sailors who's entire diet is junk & shit food and eat at the galley maybe once a week. The one's complaining about not getting packages from home...I'd bet good money they're not getting their supply of instant food-stuffs and they're forced to eat from the galley, which is serving basics. While morale packages are taken seriously, they take a back seat in priority to fuel, parts & bombs, then beans, then ship's store items. I'm sure there's a bunch having withdraws because they haven't had their Pringles or Doritos for months.

As for dirty, mildew spaces....that's on the sailors living in that section. Sweepers, clean-up that's all on them living and operating in that area. I can understand poorly designed issues but, it's on you and your senior who's supposed to be on you.

USN from 1976 - 1980 so it’s been a while. Stationed on Destroyers and a Cruiser.

But, as far as clean living spaces, we had the Executive Officer (second in command of the ship) inspect our berthing six days a week at 1100 hours. He would get down on the deck with white gloves and search for dirt, dust, etc.
The lowest ranking enlisted in the compartment was responsible for the daily cleaning. He had the job until some more junior came along.

We had clean living spaces. It was on us to make sure it was so.

I can’t imagine it has changed a whole lot. I’ll follow this to see what others say.

quote:

Originally posted by LS1 GTO:

quote:

Originally posted by bcereuss:
4 1/2 years sea duty on an SSBN…it was steak, lobster, and cheesecake 24/7/365!

Ah yes - where 150 men leave on a deployment and 75 couples return.

(j/k of course)

stealing that line,


good friend was a submariner , never heard a complaint,

uncle was on a destroyer in VN, never heard a complaint


brother from another mother was in the Marines in the mid 80's,
several ship borne deployments, and no complaints, and he does not have much good to say about the whiney bitches today

quote:

Originally posted by bcereuss:
4 1/2 years sea duty on an SSBN…it was steak, lobster, and cheesecake 24/7/365!

I did a pay mission to the USS Trepang when it came into Bremerhaven, I had just come out of the field and had not had a chance to get a hot meal in about 10 days. We are sitting there converting dollars to marks and cashing checks and we notice the crew coming in and turning up their noses to Steak with mushrooms and onions and saying they would just wait till they got off the boat. Purser asked us if we wanted to eat, Hell Yea!, was pretty good too.

Asked why the crew did not want it, he said they had ordered wrong and had been eating the same meal for like a week, oh the poor babies. SMH

Good insight from Sal


And a well written letter from a father of a sailor
https://x.com/NoVA_Campaigns/s.../2089026508169920644

Now retired — so obviously not on ABE and in truth with over 30+ years as a Surface Warfare Officer, it wasn’t always Rainbows and Skittle Shitting Unicorns. I suspect a vocal and partisan minority are doing a grave disservice to the vast majority of Sailors who simply seek to stand a taught watch, quietly do a good job, and at this point in the deployment return home safely. I harbor significant doubts there is any evidence of truth to the more egregious allegations and it is much more likely a disinformation campaign being waged as a front of modern warfare — the real question to ask is who, if not the Sailors, is actually generating and sponsoring these messages. If it is Sailors, I trust the Chain of Command to resolve the reporting in an appropriate manner.

What I recall from not that long ago but S-T-R-E-T-C-H-I-N-G across many ships, Fleets, and more than just a couple of decades was a sense of camaraderie and excitement in accomplishing the mission. That is not to say there wasn’t some complaining — we were a bunch of damn Sailors with months at sea and the nearest land measured in miles straight down below us…of course there was some grousing. However, I believe that is now being taken grossly out of context with social media.

I happen to know ADM Cooper and I have no doubt he is all over this like a hobo on a ham sandwich — to entangle a shore bound epicurean simile with this nautical tale.

Godspeed and Good Hunting, Always

A couple of wars ago in a universe far, far away,I was a Marine embarked on the USS Alamo for a
while with the Tripoli as our flagship. The first time I ever had Baked Alaska was on that ship. I love Navy chow.

Whenever we had been ashore for a bit and came back to the ship looking and smelling like hammered shit, sailors would question our what's and where's and chow was always a question. What did we eat?

The absolute, cross my heart answer was that if we weren't on the ship living large dining was always just eat what they give you.

C rations were the staple. They were delivered by chopper or truck in cardboard cases of 24 cans. The platoon guide (platoon ldr, platoon sergeant, platoon guide, were nominally in charge) would turn the cases upside down, cut off the bottom so only tin showed on the cans and the junior man in the platoon picked first, the lieutenant picked last.

Pretty straight forward.If a Marine got a c dated before 1952 every body gave him a buck. A fair amount of cash changed hands over that, this was 1968 by the way. Some of it had hair on it just to give it variety I suppose. Ham and mother fuckers were low on the cuisine list, Beanies and weenies were at the top, for most. The kiss of death was Apricots.

As everybody knew, Apricots drew incoming. Yep, Apricots drew incoming. You pick Apricots they get thrown into the bush, the idea being that one didn't want to challenge fate and with any luck Mr. Charles would pick 'em up and get to listen to the dulcet tones of incoming 105's. The wire around the 1st Tank Battalion's Cantonement (in Northern I Corps.) was filled with Apricots, still in the can, ready to be picked up and taken home to a cave somewhere.

Back on the ship, The Alamo, sailors wondered how the Marines could eat that awful grub. The Marines wondered why the sailor's mothers didn't teach them to eat what was on their plate.

P.S. I don't believe I've eaten an Apricot in 60 years. No point asking for trouble at this point in life.

I was on the AMERICA, CV-66, late 80’s. Deployments were kept at 6 months, unless something special was going on. Interspersed in that time were various port calls.

I can see how some could have problems with the time away, not denying that. For a handful there could be ‘mental issues’ of sorts. Maybe they would have those wherever they were.

I know it’s kinda in vogue to complain about ‘institutional food’, I really never did. There may be interesting or unusual items, but most was one’s imagination. I do think institutional food choices have vastly improved over the decades. One fairly recent comparison was checking out colleges with my son, the cafeteria choices are much better than even in my ‘old days’.

I will say, a ‘dear John’ letter can be tough on a 20 y/o who feels like their life is destroyed. That would be a much bigger issue than the food choices.

“Fuck the lying media.
Fuck the lying media.
Fuck the lying media...”

I ask this sincerely- is there a news organization that gives reliably truthful information?

It is almost as though the vast number of “journalists“ have been injected with liberal bias from inception!

I've said this time and time again to people around me who complain about the same thing: Truth Social is the ONLY source you need for information about foreign policy, our government, etc.

SSN and my longest time out was just over 2 months. The worst I saw on my boat was when we made a guy cry on his first cruise. We had him all pumped up and geared up to go out to the mail buoy after a month at sea but alas, the Commander on deck deemed seas to rough to send him out.
We ate very well every day. It did get a little dicey when the Cap'n Crunch ran out though.

quote:

Originally posted by VBVAGUY:
I notice cinder blocks... God Bless

Yeah, must be a Russian ship.



.

I did several deployments on the America and Constellation.
No one jumped overboard that I'm aware of.