Latest / Plausibly Live - The Dave Bowman Show Podcast / DDH | The US Navy

Transcript

DDH | The US Navy · Plausibly Live - The Dave Bowman Show Podcast

0:02
Before the microphone, there was the badge.
0:05
Before the opinions, there was experience.
0:09
Now from Florida's Space Coast bringing common sense back to
0:13
the conversation. This is the Bill Mick podcast.
0:19
And on this Tuesday morning, the 13th of October, 2020, sixth
0:23
Dave Bowman back with us from Silverdale, WA for the Bill Mick
0:27
podcast. You find us at billmick.com,
0:29
wherever you find your podcast, of course.
0:32
And something we haven't done in a while, Dave, it's Dave does
0:36
history in this hour. That's brought to you by Secure
0:38
Way Self Storage. Where are we heading this
0:41
morning, man? Well, it's something we haven't
0:42
done. Just I, I thought one of the
0:45
more clever comments on your retirement was, and I don't
0:49
remember who said it, Jim, Somebody said, great, now I'll
0:52
never know who won the American Revolution.
0:55
That was funny. That was hilarious.
0:58
You win the Internet. So I kept up with it the last
1:02
couple weeks on my page at the Dave bowmanshow.com.
1:05
We talked about the the smallpox issue and we talked about
1:08
Benjamin Franklin going to Europe and that sort of stuff.
1:11
So you can catch up with it there.
1:13
Just as a complete aside, because I think this is a
1:16
historically interesting fact that has nothing to do with what
1:19
we're talking about today, do you know that if Cleveland and
1:22
Milwaukee end up in in the World Series, it will be the first
1:27
World Series in history where the two cities are where the
1:31
Edmund Fitzgerald docked? No.
1:36
Yep, first time ever. And they'll both be in the
1:39
central time zone. Yes, yes, which is almost
1:42
acceptable, but not quite better than the Eastern Time zone.
1:47
So I. Miss I miss afternoon World
1:49
Series games. Yeah, I do too.
1:52
That was kind of nice. I would run home from school to
1:55
be there in time for the opening pitch.
1:56
It was just I enjoyed those. Those were, those were the days,
2:00
Bill. So it was right about this time
2:04
in, in 1981 that my dad and I got up and he loaded, we loaded
2:10
up in the, in the station wagon at the Ford Ltd station wagon
2:15
and we drove from Ogden, UT down to Salt Lake City to the MEPs
2:19
station, military enlistment processing station.
2:23
And he dropped me off there, shook my hand and left me there.
2:26
And this day in 1981, October 13th, Tuesday, as a matter of
2:31
fact, that I then I got on an airplane and flew to San Diego,
2:35
CA where I started basic training this day.
2:40
What is that 45 years ago, 46 years ago?
2:43
I don't even know the math. So it's, it's kind of one of
2:46
those anniversary dates for me. It's it's an important day,
2:49
October 13th, because it's also the day that in 1775 the US
2:55
Congress said, you know what, we need a Navy.
3:00
And so how did I find out that October 13th was the Navy's
3:03
birthday? Well, if you've ever been to
3:05
basic training, especially Navy basic training, and especially
3:09
in San Diego, you know that the most common food consumed there
3:13
is what we used to call grinder bird, which is actually chicken.
3:19
But because there were so many seagulls around San Diego, we
3:23
just sort of assumed that they were catching and cooking the
3:26
seagulls, but that that lived on the the grinders, which is where
3:30
we practice marching. So we'd joke about it being
3:32
grinder bird. I never believed that green eggs
3:36
and ham was actually a thing until I got to basic training
3:40
Bill where they would regularly serve us green eggs and ham for
3:44
breakfast. And I thought, well, this is
3:47
weird. A few days after I got there,
3:50
though, we showed up for lunch one day and there was steak and
3:56
potatoes roasted, you know, like baked potatoes.
4:00
And they, it smelled delicious and it was fantastic.
4:04
And the taste was amazing. And then they said, and now
4:09
attention on deck. Here's an Admiral to talk to you
4:12
about the Navy's birthday, to celebrate the Navy's birthday.
4:15
And that's when I realized that whenever the whenever the food
4:18
is really good in the military, it's because somebody important
4:22
is in the room. And so they gotta make it.
4:24
They gotta make a good impression.
4:26
October 13th is a good reason to make an impression because it
4:29
was the Navy's like. He doesn't know that's everyday.
4:35
That's not everyday fair. Right.
4:37
Yeah. He's signing the budget.
4:39
Right. I know, I know they have to
4:41
know, but same thing happens when you're, you know, on when
4:44
you're on patrol or whatever, they break out the steak and
4:47
lobster. You just know you're about to
4:50
get an announcement that we're being extended or, or whatever.
4:53
And it's there's something about the way they feed you that tells
4:57
you that what's happening. So there you go.
5:02
But it's also today, the 251st birthday of the United States
5:07
Navy, which raises some questions.
5:10
How did a collection of 13 British colonies with no money,
5:15
no established naval force and no realistic prospect of
5:20
defeating the Royal Navy at sea Remember, the Royal Navy was
5:23
ruled Britannia. They'd beaten the French in in
5:27
1763. Nothing compared.
5:32
They were the dominant military force of the time.
5:34
Absolutely. They ruled the waves.
5:37
How in the world did we look at this and go, you know what, we
5:43
need a Navy. The British of course controlled
5:46
the seas. They controlled everything.
5:47
They all the, the trade routes, everything was, was, was
5:53
controlled by the Royal Navy. And of course, the British Army
5:56
was the world's most professional army, but it wasn't
5:59
the biggest army in the world. It just happened to be really
6:02
good. In the autumn of 1775, though,
6:05
the British, the British still held Boston.
6:07
We talked about that Washington was still attempting to organize
6:11
the Continental Army and the colonials faced severe
6:14
shortages. We've talked about the fact we
6:15
didn't have any gunpowder, we didn't have any supplies, and
6:19
British ships could carry munitions and troops and
6:22
provisions across the Atlantic, although it wasn't quite that
6:25
easy in October. On October 13th, Congress in
6:30
Philadelphia votes to fit out two armed vessels 2 Two armed
6:36
vessels and here's. Your Navy.
6:38
Both of it. There you go.
6:39
And they gave them a job. Your job is to go out and
6:41
intercept transports carrying British supplies to British
6:45
forces. Now, look, it's a limited
6:47
measure. It has an immediate military
6:51
purpose, and it doesn't really fulfill a a developed plan for
6:56
ocean going Navy. But as John Adams would observe,
7:02
we're not going to be able to win this war without a Navy.
7:04
As it turned out, he was right. It just happened to be a French
7:08
Navy, not ours. So how do you create a Navy when
7:14
you don't have any warships, you don't have any crews, you don't
7:17
have any officers, you don't have any naval establishment at
7:21
all. You don't even have a basic
7:22
training center in San Diego, CA.
7:24
Which by the way, when I landed in San Diego this night 45 years
7:28
ago, I didn't know that I could have gone to Orlando for basic
7:32
training, which I don't know that I would have gone anyway.
7:36
But you had a choice. You could go to San Diego,
7:38
Orlando or Chicago. Well, nobody's going to go to
7:41
Chicago. Everybody wanted to go to
7:42
Orlando because that's where they did the the Co Ed boot
7:46
camp. And so when you had, so when you
7:49
had a sister company in Orlando, it was really a sister company.
7:53
It wasn't just a company in the same division.
7:56
It was actually women. And I didn't know any better.
7:59
I was 18, Bill and I had just turned 18.
8:02
I mean, I wasn't even a month old, 18, so I didn't know I
8:06
could go there. But we didn't even have those.
8:09
We had nothing. We had John Adams, who was an
8:12
advocate for American naval power.
8:13
We had a guy by the name of Isec Hopkins.
8:17
We decided that this guy Hopkins would be the commander in chief
8:20
of the Continental Navy. You're it, dude.
8:22
You got it. Take charge.
8:26
We had a Scotsman by the name of John Paul Jones.
8:30
And we had a ship named Alfred, which strikes me as funny.
8:34
I don't know really, really know why, but it does.
8:36
This. The Alfred was one of our first
8:38
ships and it was one of the first ships to raise the
8:42
American flag, which wasn't the American flag we know now, but
8:46
it was there As Washington begins his effort to capture
8:51
British, British supplies to try and isolate Boston even further.
8:58
The Navy begins to play a role in this.
9:00
And we've we've talked about during the siege of Boston, how
9:04
the Massachusetts legislature started authorizing privateers
9:08
and how they would go out and they would raid British ships.
9:12
And it some of the stuff is is just it reads like stuff out of
9:15
comic book Batman type stuff. Pow, Sally.
9:19
Just the way we were hitting. Every Batman needs his Alfred,
9:22
so that's good, yeah. We're hitting British ships.
9:25
We're we're stealing their supplies, basically.
9:28
And while we didn't have a Navy per SE, we were annoying the
9:34
living crap out of the British. They were.
9:37
General Howe would write that that how about how frustrated he
9:42
was about the fact that the colonies were basically stealing
9:47
his supplies, burning his ships, capturing his gunpowder,
9:50
capturing food, making an already difficult supply
9:54
situation because they have to transport all this stuff across
9:57
the Atlantic in the winter time, making that already problematic.
10:02
And yet here we were, slowly but surely gaining naval, if not
10:08
superiority, at least an annoyance.
10:13
In a lot of ways, it reminds me of World War One and World War 2
10:17
with the submarine warfare. There's no way that Imperial
10:21
Germany, or even later Germany during World War Two, could
10:26
compete militarily, Navy to Navy.
10:29
But by using a, by using the submarine, they were able to
10:33
make the war more competitive. In the same kind of vein, we're
10:38
doing the same sort of thing. OK, We don't have a 74 ship gun
10:43
ship of the line to go toe to toe with the HMS Victory.
10:46
We just, we just don't have that.
10:48
But we don't need to. What we need to have are fast,
10:52
quick, small ships that can get in and out of places that your
10:56
bigger ships can't get to so that we can go out and capture
11:00
your supply ships. And the British, for whatever
11:03
reason, the same lesson they would learn in 1918 and later in
11:07
1940, for some reason just didn't adapt the idea of
11:11
convoying. They just, it just never seems
11:14
to occur to them. I don't really know why.
11:17
But because of that, we're able to capture these ships and
11:21
continue to supply the Continental Army.
11:22
And this is what the United States Navy, Continental Navy,
11:25
as it's known then, does throughout the American
11:28
Revolutionary War. We continue to capture ships.
11:31
We continue to annoy the Navy or the British Navy.
11:34
We continue to to we're, we're not even building ships at this
11:38
point. We're just hiring ships,
11:42
captains, people going, hey, you know what?
11:44
I, I got some time and some, some money and I'm what do you
11:48
want me to do? And so we give them a letter of
11:50
Mark and reprisal. We send them out on their way
11:54
and they begin to fight these this war all around the country,
11:59
all around the world. In fact, Benjamin Franklin, when
12:01
he sails to to France, will actually get diverted to capture
12:08
British ships in in European waters instead of just sailing
12:12
straight to France. And, you know, taking over his
12:14
diplomatic role. He actually decides, well, you
12:17
know what, we got an opportunity here.
12:20
Let's start capturing British ships.
12:21
And so they do. This is this, this fighting
12:25
spirit that we have is something that has always permeated, I
12:27
think, the United States Navy, this idea that we don't really
12:30
care that much about the odds and we're going to do whatever
12:35
it takes to get the job done. You got, you know, John Paul
12:39
Jones, I have not yet begun to fight.
12:41
You've got the, the, the reprisal, taking ships in
12:45
France, got all this stuff going on now.
12:47
We're never going to match British naval strength.
12:50
We're never gonna be able to do that.
12:54
But our privateers, our naval operations and our French Sea
12:58
power eventually is going to enable us to, if not, at least
13:07
when, we're going to at least make it noticeable.
13:11
But a strange thing happens, Bill.
13:13
When we finally win our independence in 1783, Congress
13:17
meets and says, you know what, we're all done now.
13:22
So all you Navy people, you can just go home now because now we
13:28
don't need you no more. And so the Navy essentially in
13:33
1783 just disbands. It just goes away.
13:38
And at that point, do we need a Navy?
13:41
Do we not need a Navy? Do we, do we continue doing this
13:44
stuff? Do we continue to say to
13:47
ourselves, well, maybe we should build more, maybe we should
13:51
build less? Everybody seems to be divided on
13:55
this. They lost a defense mindset or
13:58
something. Well, I think they started
14:00
realizing that ships cost us. I'm sorry, almost had a bad
14:03
word. Ships cost a lot of money and we
14:07
didn't have a lot of money. So they kind of said, well,
14:12
where do you want to go now? Because we're going to have to
14:14
do something different. We can't continue to do what
14:18
we've been doing. And we pick it up in just a
14:25
moment or two. Dave, does history on Bill Mick
14:28
live. We continue here at billmick.com
14:31
in just moments. The Bill Mick podcast continues
15:58
here at billmick.com. Appreciate that you're along
16:00
with us here and enjoying Dave does history on a Tuesday
16:04
morning. You want to text us 321788.
16:07
Mick will not take any calls till the end of the hour if
16:10
we're able to get to them then. But Dave, so we've decided Navy
16:14
was really good, helped us a lot, don't really need you
16:17
anymore. Especially that French 1:00 we,
16:19
we really like that French Navy, but, but there's a problem with
16:23
the French Navy, which is that they're kind of paralyzed now
16:28
because they, after our revolution, the, the French
16:30
Revolution occurs and it just, it's just a mess over there.
16:34
And of course, that causes all kinds of political turmoil here
16:38
that is unrelated to what we're we're dealing with.
16:40
But it's a it it makes for an interesting subject if we ever
16:45
get that far along the way. So in 1794, the United States
16:51
Congress starts realizing, hey, you know what, we actually do
16:55
need an actual Navy. And so we're going to build a
17:01
Navy. Now, we don't really have the
17:06
infrastructure to do this. While we have some experience in
17:10
shipbuilding, while we have some experience in building regular
17:15
ships, Navy ships in particular, the six ships we're gonna build
17:19
are what are known as frigates. These are 44 gun frigates.
17:23
They carry 44 guns in a single deck, and they are designed to
17:28
be fast more than anything else. There's an Old Navy saying give
17:33
me a fast ship, friend. Tend to go in harm's way.
17:36
These frigates are the foundation really of the modern
17:41
United States Navy. These six frigates are, are
17:43
ordered in 1794. The, The six frigates are well
17:52
built. They're very good ships.
17:54
In fact, one of them is going to still be around today, the USS
17:58
Constitution. The other 5 have various degrees
18:04
of careers that, that are both good and sometimes bad.
18:07
But these ships are going to be involved in, in everything from
18:11
Marine, the, the Quasi War with France to the Barbary pirate
18:16
issues to even the War of 1812 against the British, which is,
18:24
you know, that's, it's, it's a point of pride for the Navy.
18:26
Of course, the Constitution versus the Guerriere, and there
18:29
were others as well along that way.
18:33
These six ships, though, are really the establishment of what
18:36
happens with the United States Navy.
18:38
From that point forward. We will always have a United
18:43
States Navy. Now, sometimes that Navy will be
18:47
very strong, very powerful, very intense, and sometimes it won't
18:53
be. Sometimes it'll be neglected,
18:56
sometimes it will be ignored, and sometimes you'll wonder, do
19:01
we even know what we're doing here?
19:03
I mean, it's like, wow. As we proceed past the War of
19:09
1812, we continue to build frigates.
19:13
We, we actually only build one, what we would call a ship of the
19:18
line, a big, you know, giant 74 gun plus.
19:21
It's just not our style. We like the frigates, we like
19:24
the fast ships. So we're building frigates and
19:26
sloops and that sort of thing. We're developing the Naval
19:29
Academy in Annapolis and we're building this, this tradition
19:35
that has, you know, really stayed with us throughout the
19:38
years we reached the American Civil War and technology has
19:45
begun to change. We've, we've had this age of
19:49
sail thing where we've, you know, sailed ships around the
19:52
world, but now all of a sudden steam is becoming the thing.
19:56
Steam driven ships are now becoming a thing.
19:59
But we even haven't, we haven't even mastered that quite yet,
20:02
Bill. So a lot of our bigger ships are
20:04
what they call steam frigates. So they're frigates, they have
20:08
big sails just like the like the 1794 ships, but they also have a
20:12
steam engine with a single propeller.
20:14
And so the idea is. When they're way out at sea and
20:18
there's lots of wind, they just sail.
20:21
And they only use the engines when they're in close and they
20:24
need to navigate through shallow waters or harbors or rivers or
20:27
whatever. And so even at that point, we're
20:30
not ready to go. But then in 1862, along comes
20:33
the USS Monitor, the first ironclad vessel in the United
20:38
States Navy. Now, of course, she takes on the
20:40
Merrimack or, or the CSS Virginia as she's properly
20:44
known, in one of the most impactful, one of the most
20:49
critical, one of the most important naval battles in the
20:52
entire history of the world. And it's a complete draw.
20:55
These two ships bill, sail around each other for like 4 or
20:58
five hours, firing away at each other.
21:01
Boom, boom, boom. Cannonballs are bouncing off
21:04
each other because they haven't built the cannons that can
21:07
penetrate the iron yet. So the cannonballs are literally
21:10
just bouncing off each other and denting.
21:13
And finally, after about four or five hours, they realize we're
21:16
not getting anywhere here. So they just sail away from each
21:20
other. Now, while it's a draw from a
21:23
from the standpoint of an actual battle, it's actually kind of a
21:27
strategic victory for the United States for the Union because the
21:30
Merrimack the the Virginia had withdrew and was not able to
21:34
complete its attack on the wooden U.S.
21:38
Navy that was blockading Norfolk.
21:41
That, of course, represents a Seminole change in how ships are
21:44
built. And if you want to see something
21:46
really weird, follow the development of the ironclads
21:51
during the during the American Civil War.
21:53
We were talking earlier about the the thing car that looks so
21:57
weird and the azusas that look weird at this particular point.
22:02
Basically, they just start taking any boat that they can
22:04
get and bolting iron to the side of it.
22:09
And you get ships that look like paddle wheel steamers, paddle
22:13
river boats that are just coated with iron.
22:16
And we're gonna sail these things up and down the river,
22:20
the Mississippi River. And of course we do the Battle
22:23
of Vicksburg and the, the, the, the, the invasion at New Orleans
22:27
and those sorts of things. And it, it works.
22:29
It's technology that works. It just looks really well it.
22:35
Was the prototype of the first Klingon battle cruiser.
22:38
In a lot of ways, it's it's a remarkable story and it's a
22:42
remarkable thing that happens. We move from that, of course,
22:45
then we go after the post Civil War era.
22:49
You have the ironclad era where ships, I, I think the ships of
22:54
that era are particularly beautiful.
22:57
They really look nice. They're very heavy.
23:01
They're very slow, and they're very dirty because they're still
23:05
burning coal. And so the United States has
23:08
this kind of tradition of painting our ships just splash
23:13
white. I mean, they are just
23:15
brilliantly white painted. You've heard of the great white
23:17
fleet that that Theodore Roosevelt is going to send
23:20
around the world. They look beautiful.
23:23
They're very slow. They're very ponderous and
23:26
they're very dirty because of this coal that they're burning.
23:28
So you get these beautiful white ships and just this black smoke
23:33
pouring out of the top of them as they're making speed.
23:37
This goes on for, you know, the better part of the, the, the
23:41
second-half of the, the 8, the 1900s and into the, into the
23:45
early part of the 1900's, the 1800's, the early part of the
23:48
1900's, the British designed a ship called the HMS Dreadnought.
23:52
And once again, this changes everything.
23:55
We begin to build ships that are giants.
23:59
They're dreadnoughts is what they are.
24:01
And they are heavily armed, heavily armored battleships.
24:06
They are the prototypes of the battleships that you would know
24:08
today. One of these dreadnoughts, the
24:11
American dreadnought, still exists today.
24:14
You can go down to Texas, used to be at the San Jacinto
24:17
monument, I believe now she's in Galveston.
24:19
But the USS Texas was built in the early 1900s.
24:23
She has a dreadnought battleship that was built by the United
24:26
States, fought in World War One, fought in World War 2.
24:30
She was at Normandy during World War 2 and then later on in the
24:34
Pacific. And she was saved at the end of
24:36
the war. She is the only surviving
24:39
dreadnought battleship in the entire world today.
24:42
There's no other ship like her. You can go down and see her
24:45
somewhere. I have pictures of me when we
24:46
went when we were kids to see her.
24:48
And so she's she's there. Of course, along the way we
24:53
start building other types of ships.
24:55
We start building destroyers and, and frigates and we build
24:59
cruisers and we have all these ships that we've added in here.
25:02
And of course, because it's the most important ships in the Navy
25:06
in the early 1900s, we start building submarines.
25:08
And one of our first submarines is commanded by this Lieutenant,
25:13
who seems to be a complete and total klutz.
25:16
His name is Charles Nimitz. And he keeps getting in trouble
25:20
because he keeps making mistakes and keeps grinding his ships and
25:23
keeps screwing things up. But he's the commanding officer
25:27
of submarine and he's, and you can't hardly get people to go
25:30
into submarines. And he keeps volunteering.
25:32
So they keep saying, well, as much of A screw up as you are,
25:35
we're going to keep you because you know you're good at that.
25:38
And so he moves up through submarines and eventually Bill
25:43
Charles Nimitz will become an Admiral, an important Admiral of
25:47
that along the way, and he's still the qualified submarine.
25:51
During World War One, our Navy goes over to Europe.
25:54
We don't see any action per SE, but just the very existence of
25:59
the United States Navy in European waters again, for the
26:01
first time since the Revolutionary or since the
26:04
Barbary Coast Wars, really has sent a message to Europe, which
26:08
is that we're here and we are here to stay.
26:12
And we continue in just moments. Dave does history on Bill Mick
26:16
live. Well, not Bill Mick live
26:18
anymore. The Bill Mick podcast.
26:21
I'm still adjusting the changes boys and girls and you are too
26:24
glad to have you with us at billmick.com and the on air
26:28
across American network. Our sponsor in the hour secure
26:32
way self storage on Ellis Rd. 1/4 mile West of Wickham.
26:37
Business owners, you know your space is valuable and you also
26:40
know how expensive it is. When storing things at your
26:43
office is in the way of the main job you need to do well, you
26:47
want an affordable, reliable solution that is Secure Way self
26:50
Storage. Whether it's small spaces for
26:52
supplies or large ones for equipment, Secure Way ready to
26:56
give you the relief you're looking for.
26:58
Climate controlled keypad entry and exit and clean as it can be.
27:01
Stay organized and down to business with Secure Way Self
27:05
Storage. Find their link at billmick.com,
27:09
give them a look, and let them provide the relief you're
27:11
looking for. Dave does.
27:12
History continues in just moments here at billmick.com.
28:16
and the Bill Mick podcast continues.
28:19
The Dave Bowman along for the ride.
28:19
And it's a Tuesday, so it is Dave does history, so a lot of
28:24
work and a lot of development and Klingon battle cruisers to
28:29
get it all started. Where we going now, Dave?
28:44
Once Upon a time we were fighting them.
28:46
Now we're allied with them, but they're still bigger than we are
28:49
in 1921. You get what's known as the
28:52
London Naval Treaty. There's a, there's a lot of
28:56
discussion, a lot of historical analysis of, of the cause of
29:00
World War One. And many people believe that it
29:05
was a naval arms race that caused World War One.
29:08
The fact that people were building ships and they were
29:10
building them too fast and too big and they were, technology
29:13
was outstripping common sense. And so the idea here was, was if
29:17
we limit ourselves to what we can build for navies that will
29:21
preserve the peace. Obviously that's a mistake in
29:25
belief. And I, I think the more you
29:28
analyze that, that idea that the naval arms, it's certainly
29:31
contributed to the causes of World War One.
29:34
But I, I think that it's short sighted to say it was the cause
29:39
of the First World War. So the idea here was we're gonna
29:42
tell the world that the United States and Britain can have the
29:46
most powerful navies and everybody else can have some
29:50
Navy, you know, and you, sorry, not, not as powerful as ours
29:55
because, you know, obviously we won.
29:57
So we get the biggest Navy. The problem with that treaty is
30:01
that one of our allies gets told, well, we don't really like
30:08
you even though you're our ally, so you can't have a very big
30:12
Navy. And that of course, sticks in
30:14
the craw, so to speak, of Japan and will lead to problems later
30:18
on. In the meantime, technology
30:21
continues to change. Things get better.
30:22
Things get quicker. They get they get faster, but
30:26
there are limits. Now, this treaty has put size
30:29
limits on ships. They can only be 35,000 tons
30:33
total. And so this causes navies to
30:36
begin to experiment with things and this is where we see the
30:40
birth of the the aircraft carrier. the US Navy begins to
30:44
experiment with its first carrier, the Langley, and flying
30:48
planes on that. They learn very quickly and
30:51
building 2 battle cruisers. The Navy decides, you know what,
30:55
we don't really need battle cruisers because of this treaty.
30:58
We can't have them anyway. But the treaty doesn't say
31:00
anything about aircraft carriers.
31:03
So instead of finishing these two ships, the Lexington and
31:06
Saratoga, as battle cruisers, they build a big flight deck on
31:09
them, a huge island on the starboard side, turn them into
31:14
aircraft carriers. Woo Hoo.
31:16
We've they're not. They're not limited by trees.
31:19
And oh, by the way, just for good measure, on these aircraft
31:22
carriers, we're gonna put 88 inch guns like they would have
31:26
had on the cruisers. So basically these are big giant
31:29
cruisers with a big flight deck on them.
31:33
It doesn't take the Navy long to realize that those big guns are
31:36
basically useless in the in the face of the airplanes that they
31:39
need. They eventually get rid of
31:41
those, although not until almost World War Two time.
31:44
But this development begins to happen within the Navy of the
31:49
aircraft carriers. We go from the Lexington and
31:50
Saratoga to the Ranger to the famous Yorktown class, the three
31:55
ships, the Yorktown, the Hornet, and of course the Enterprise.
31:59
And those are the ships that are gonna carry us into World War 2
32:02
as we go. We also developed the fast
32:04
battleships. These are battleships that kind
32:09
of meet the tonnage limits of the treaty, but not really.
32:12
And they're fast enough to keep up with the aircraft carriers.
32:15
These are ships like the South Dakotas, the North Carolinas,
32:18
and of course eventually the Iowas, all four of which are
32:22
preserved today as museum ships. You can see all four of the
32:26
Iowas, various places around the country.
32:29
San Pedro, Philadelphia, Norfolk, and Hawaii is where the
32:35
Missouri is. So all of those ships are there.
32:38
And of course submarines continue to develop as well,
32:41
becoming faster and faster. We don't have time to go through
32:44
the whole of World War 2. If you really want to know those
32:47
books, back there on my shelf is the the famous Samuel Elliott
32:51
Morrison United States Naval Operations during World War 2.
32:55
Needless to say, we we accomplished quite a bit.
33:01
There are moments when you think in some ways we have gone back
33:05
to our roots, where small United States naval vessels are taking
33:09
on giant Japanese battleships and winning the battle.
33:13
It is a testament to our tradition and our way of doing
33:17
things. And we successfully win the
33:20
Second World War, at the end of which, much like the beginning
33:26
of the American Revolution, our country kind of says, well, it's
33:31
great that we have this huge Navy, but now we don't need it
33:35
anymore. And so they literally slashed
33:38
the Navy more by almost 70%. I mean, it's just, it's crazy
33:42
how much we got rid of and how many of those ships that we'd
33:46
built during that war that would serve in some cases 2-3 years,
33:52
eventually just end up getting thrown away because we don't
33:55
need them anymore. We don't want them anymore,
33:57
can't afford to operate them anymore.
34:00
As we move into the 1950s, of course, nuclear power becomes an
34:03
issue, becomes the the focal point of what we're doing.
34:07
Nuclear submarines become the primary focus of the Navy in the
34:11
1960s, and the ballistic missile submarines become the absolute
34:16
pointy end of the deterrent stick.
34:18
And this is where I come into all this, because that's what I
34:21
did. These ships are designed to
34:24
disappear and to maintain the deterrent force of the United
34:28
States of America, to keep the peace as it were.
34:32
And all of this started way back in 1775, this day, October 13th,
34:38
when Congress said, you know what, you 2 ships go out and
34:42
just start being a Navy. And like most Navy people, they
34:46
looked at him and went, aye, aye, chief, and went off and did
34:51
without a whole lot of instructions, without a whole
34:53
lot of guidance. They just sort of invented it on
34:56
the fly. Today, of course, we have
34:59
colleges and training manuals and we even have Blue Jackets
35:03
manuals. I still have my my Blue Jackets
35:05
manual from when I was in the Navy.
35:07
These are these are books that tell you everything you need to
35:10
know about how to be a sailor, how to be a blue jacket.
35:13
I have I have quite a collection of these.
35:16
I actually have ones dating back to pre World War 2.
35:19
I like them because Bill, my gun is a 45 caliber 1911 pistol and
35:26
the instructions for cleaning that and maintaining that are in
35:29
my 1940 Blue Jackets manual. So every time I, every time I
35:33
get the procedure out to, to clean my gun, I'm using my Blue
35:37
Jackets manual. My Navy history is, is playing.
35:40
It's not in the modern ones 'cause we don't, we don't carry
35:43
those per SE. But all of that started October
35:46
13th, 1775. And then you turn around and
35:50
October 13th, 2000. Well, 1981, 45 years ago today,
35:57
I walked into that boot camp, that training center in San
36:00
Diego and began my Navy career and my Navy life as well,
36:06
choosing to to serve in submarines, probably the best
36:10
decision I ever made, cheating to get past the eye exam so that
36:15
I could stay in submarines. And I really loved both the Navy
36:20
and I love submarines. And it's just a reminder of this
36:23
day that how important that was. The enduring lesson of all this,
36:27
of course, is that American naval power is important to our
36:31
independence and to our security.
36:34
And of course, the big lesson is when the Admiral comes to lunch,
36:38
the food gets way better. And that it does, I have no
36:44
doubt. We continue on this Tuesday
36:47
morning. In moment you want to talk with
36:49
Dave 321788 Mick 321788 6425 Year Text also welcome at that
36:57
same number when we continue in just a moment here at
37:01
billmick.com. And the Bill Mick podcast
38:05
continues. Dave Bowman with us with Dave
38:06
does history. Hey, tomorrow in this hour, the
38:08
program political scientist Chris Murrow joins us.
38:12
We're going to take a look at the Florida amendments to the
38:15
Constitution, the local referenda as well.
38:18
And then on Friday we're going to talk in our 7:00 hour with
38:21
Supervisor of Elections Tim Bo Bannock.
38:23
So busy week here ahead on the show.
38:25
Look forward to having Chris Murrow with us tomorrow.
38:28
That'll be interesting to you get a lot of questions about
38:32
these amendments and the local referenda issue.
38:35
We we won't have time to delve into the one city, one or two
38:38
cities. Just have a bevy of those on the
38:40
ballot and you're in in the city.
38:42
Sorry, you're on your own. Don't have a chance to get to
38:44
those, but we are going to take the county wide ones and the
38:47
statewide amendments tomorrow with Chris Murrow.
38:50
And then I've been asked about am I working on my ballot and
38:54
what am I going to tell you what I'm doing?
38:55
Well, I've told you what I'm doing for almost 25 years.
38:58
So yeah, I will probably release that as a Mcnugget column over
39:03
the weekend and we'll talk that next week as we take a look at
39:06
how we're voting in the election.
39:08
So Dave, as we wrap up, Dave does history in this look at the
39:11
Navy. You really enjoyed that time in
39:15
submarine service. Was it nerve racking at all as
39:21
you made the decision to go there or did you?
39:23
What were your thoughts going in to that?
39:26
Going into it, no. Going into it was youthful
39:30
idealism. Remember that I enlisted when I
39:32
was 17. I had made the decision to
39:34
enlist at 16. My parents had to actually sign
39:39
for me to go in and I didn't actually report the boot camp
39:43
until I was just two weeks, 3 weeks past my my 18th birthday.
39:49
So going into submarines was easy.
39:51
I had read Clay Blair Junior's Silent Victory.
39:54
I knew that's where I wanted to be.
39:56
The bigger problem was my vision.
39:59
I kept failing the eye exam and Long story short I ended up
40:04
having to cheat on the eye exam to to stay in but.
40:09
The, the interesting thing about going into submarines was in
40:12
basic training, they give you this list that here's a bunch of
40:16
jobs, you pick the, the, the top five jobs that you want to, to
40:20
go for and then, you know, we'll see where it goes.
40:24
And so I, you know, sound is my thing.
40:27
I, I enjoy audio. I always have.
40:29
I wanted to be a sonar guy, and so that was my number one pick.
40:33
Torpedo fire control was in there, just torpedoes in
40:36
general. And at the very bottom of this
40:38
list was something called SWSE and nobody knew what it was in
40:42
basic training. Nobody in San Diego had any clue
40:45
what that was. But it was a submarine rate.
40:48
So I put it on the bottom of the the list.
40:50
It was my #5 pick. What I didn't know was that
40:53
strategic weapons systems, electronics was the Navy's
40:57
priority and so if you put that anywhere on your list, it didn't
41:00
matter what position it was in, that's where you were going
41:03
period. No clue what it was.
41:07
Turned out to be the best thing that could have possibly
41:09
happened because not only did it make me a ballistic missile fire
41:13
control man, but because of my clearances I wouldn't and, and
41:17
positions and that sort of thing.
41:18
I was able to do all the other stuff that I wanted to do
41:20
anyway. I was able to qualify sonar
41:21
shack, qualified lookout, qualified Helms, but all the
41:24
stuff that you would do anyway, plus doing my real job, which
41:29
was ballistic missile fire control, which by the way, no
41:32
longer exists because the Navy has replaced that with a laptop
41:36
computer, so they don't even need us anymore.
41:40
Nothing like AI firing nuclear weapons.
41:42
Come on. Well.
41:43
It's not quite AI, but it's, you don't need these massive
41:47
computers anymore 'cause you know, technology changes and
41:51
just like, just like the real world, what technology does away
41:54
with some jobs it it did away with ours too.
41:57
Sure, no doubt. Did you ever have moments as,
42:01
and, and, and in any career, you're going to have those no
42:04
matter what it is. But what were the moments that
42:06
had you thinking, you know, this whole submarine thing may not
42:10
have been a good idea? October 31st 1986 we experienced
42:17
a quote major engineering casualty, which I don't want to
42:21
go in too deep here, but quite frankly, it should have killed
42:25
us and the fact that it didn't kill us was something of a
42:28
miracle. It's it's you know, it was
42:34
patrol 13, which is weird. We were 13 days out of port and
42:39
we essentially were well, well past the thousand mile limit
42:44
from from land that night should have killed us.
42:48
It didn't I, I look back at that with some, you know, it's
42:54
there's a combination of somewhere between nightmares and
42:56
somewhere between Kay, it's his 2nd birthday.
42:59
But that was the last time. That was my last patrol.
43:03
There was a night where we almost got run over by a
43:04
freighter and you kind of think to yourself, well, you know, it
43:09
wasn't our time, I guess. I mean, that's, that's the only
43:12
way you can explain it. For the most part, I really
43:15
enjoyed what I was doing. There are I, I, I, there's a
43:20
line in a Tom Clancy novel that I have adopted because as I look
43:24
back at it, I'm always amazed that I seem to enjoy it.
43:29
And I think what I miss most about it now today is being
43:33
young enough to think it was fun and not realize how dangerous it
43:37
really was. Submarining is horribly
43:40
dangerous. And what we're finding now is we
43:44
were exposed. You know, you think about
43:46
radiation. Well, it's a nuclear submarine.
43:48
You have nuclear weapons, you think about radiation, ionizing
43:51
radiation. But Bill, you put, you know,
43:53
you're talking about being in the car with the cigarette
43:55
smoke. Imagine that because I was in
43:59
the Navy where you could smoke along with all the other stuff
44:03
that in the atmosphere, from chemicals to to smoke to diesel
44:09
to amine to all all that stuff. Body odor and.
44:13
We're finding out now just how much damage that has done to so
44:18
many of us. And it's, it's, it's frightening
44:21
to think when you, when they've started putting together this
44:24
list and these kind of things, how much impact this has had and
44:28
how dangerous this really was. Fortunately, I think the Navy is
44:32
learning from that. And I think that they have made
44:35
adjustments in the newer submarines that they don't have
44:37
quite those issues. But for those of us who were
44:42
cold Warriors, it's kind of a frustrating thing because we're
44:45
not global War on Terror people. So we're not upfront in
44:49
Congress's mind. We're not upfront in the
44:51
public's mind. We're not the World War 2 in
44:53
Vietnam vets. So we're not, you know,
44:55
remembered as that. We're kind of in this silent era
44:59
where nobody really knows what we did.
45:00
Nobody really knows how we did it.
45:03
And so they don't really understand some of the issues
45:04
that we face. And, you know, I've, I've lost
45:07
too many friends to leukemia, various forms of cancer, various
45:11
forms of lung issues, fibrosis and that kind of stuff.
45:15
And, you know, and I have my own issues and I don't want to go
45:18
into that here, but a, a lot of that is traceable to the fact
45:21
that you're living in a, in a very dangerous place.
45:26
But I do miss being young enough to think that it was fun.
45:30
Yeah, no doubt about that. I would assume the technology
45:33
has advanced vastly with air recirculate circulation
45:37
purification in in a submarine environment.
45:41
They still smoke on them or no? No, the, the Navy went
45:43
non-smoking somewhere around the early 2000s.
45:47
I don't remember exactly the date, but yeah, the, the, the
45:50
Navy is completely smoke free. There's not, there's not even
45:54
smoking areas from what I understand.
45:56
But yeah, the, the when I was in, in the 80s, we had a thing
46:01
called the oxygen generator, which is where we would take in
46:05
water, seawater and using electrolysis, we would split the
46:10
hydrogen and the oxygen, keep the oxygen and dump the hydrogen
46:13
overboard. And then we'd bleed the oxygen
46:15
into the boat. Well, of course, the problem
46:17
with that is hydrogen, which is highly explosive and highly
46:20
dangerous. And, you know, I woke up 1
46:23
morning, come out of the bunk room, I got to go to the head
46:26
and I'm kind of and MMM, 2 Baronella is running out of
46:31
machinery too, and he's screaming.
46:32
It's gonna blow. It's gonna blow, and I thought I
46:36
might as well just go back to bed 'cause if it blows, I'm dead
46:39
anyway, so who cares? But they managed to to to calm
46:43
it down. But they don't even have those
46:45
anymore. Now they have more NASA type
46:47
stuff that recirculates air and cleans it better than we ever
46:52
imagined being able to do. And I.
46:54
Submarines stink, man. If you've ever been on one, you
46:56
know what I'm talking about. If you've ever visited 1, you
46:59
know what I'm talking about. They smell bad.
47:01
There's a reason they called them pig boats one upon a time
47:04
and still kind of do. I had a memory pop up on
47:09
Facebook over the last couple of days.
47:12
I was at the commissioning at the Naval Station at Cape
47:16
Canaveral and it was the USS Indiana and it was an amazing
47:23
ceremony to watch and had about 3/4 of a promise to go on a test
47:29
run with with that or a symbol. I would love to do that just to
47:34
see what the experience was like.
47:36
It's it would be totally different than reality and I get
47:39
it, but how cool would that be? The best way I can explain it to
47:42
people is imagine being in an elevator that moves in three
47:46
dimensions because you feel all the motion, but you can't see.
47:49
You have no frame of reference. Everything is fixed.
47:52
But you, your body tells you that you're moving.
47:55
And it's, it's really a, it's, it's a unique experience.
47:58
It's an interesting experience. It's, it was fun ish, you know,
48:03
45 years ago it was a lot of fun.
48:05
I, I joke about when I go back today, back in 2018, I had the
48:11
opportunity to visit our sister ship, the USS Kentucky.
48:15
And we went down to the Kentucky and we're, we're going down the
48:17
ladders. And I said to my friend Mitch, I
48:19
said, you know, this used to be a lot easier to get down these
48:21
ladders. And then when we got down to
48:23
machinery too, I'm looking around going, this is a lot
48:26
smaller than I remember it being.
48:29
I remember this being huge, but it's tiny and the Ohio class
48:34
submarines are big. So it it, it just, it's weird
48:37
how memory, you know, makes things palatable that maybe
48:43
weren't, I don't know. Go back and walk through your
48:45
high school that was huge to you and see how small it is today.
48:50
I have done that. My high school still is huge
48:52
because my high school was AWPA works project.
48:54
So it's a bomb shelter. It's.
48:57
It's Oh well, there's that that that always makes it better.
49:00
Dave Bowman, fun having you back here on a Tuesday and I look
49:04
forward to us continuing this. Dave does history and having you
49:07
there for hour one of the discussion on Tuesdays as well.
49:10
As long as that's what's working out for you, we'll make it
49:12
happen, buddy. Yeah, it's a lot easier to get
49:14
up at 3:00 than at 2, so. Yeah, that's true.
49:17
Any idea what we're looking at next week?
49:19
Let's get back on to the Let's wrap up the American Revolution.
49:21
Let's let's finish. We do have to let people know
49:24
who won that's. True, yeah.
49:26
We've got to get there. Hey, Secure way Self Storage
49:28
brought you this hour of the Bill Make podcast on a Tuesday.
49:32
Tomorrow, Chris Miro joins us. We look at amendments and ballot
49:35
referenda and try to give you some insight there.
49:38
And Dave Bowman, we will talk to you when well, A, when we get
49:44
off the air and B, when we get back together next Tuesday.
49:48
Thank you my friend, I appreciate it.
49:50
We'll see them. All right.