This began as a reply to a comment at CDR Salamander’s place.  In the past week, it has come to light that the Fleet has major problems keeping their maintenance up.  Most disturbing is the remarks by VADM Phil Balisle’s, USN (Ret) report on the lack of readiness of the AEGIS Radar Systems.

The sad part is things to have kept this on track were in place in the early 90s, and by the mid-90s, some senior officers, one in particular who had failed the examination, made sure the inspection mechanism was retired when he got to COMNAVSURFLANT Staff as the Combat Systems Readiness Officer.

I decided to leave part of the quote over there, and keep going here, to save space…and for those interested in the history behind this, and what, if anything, it may have prevented.

Interesting.  Back to the early 90′s when ADM Kelso determined we’re pursue TQM/TQL with a vengeance, the famous demo was the red bead/white bead input, and how, without TQM/TQL, you can’t shoot the assembly line worked, it’s management, who has not ensured a proper input resource is actually to blame.

Sounds to me like someone decided, at upper levels to reject such thinking and just wing it and…blame the COs.  Wrong.  And bad for the future.  On another note, it was passed on to me, this sort of professional blood bath followed at the end of the Vietnam era, when, ships that had been run into the ground and had been denied maintenance, surprise, surprise…had major engineering accidents that killed many and wounded many more…Who’s fault?  The CO and CHENG, for not ensuring safe operations, while suffering from a paucity of parts.  The outcome begat the PEBs, and…for a time, the crews also were hacked to death (figuratively speaking in the professional realm), because they couldn’t get the plant safe…again without much help.  Then the shore side began to come on line and provide support, and things improved, but not after much real and professional blood was shed.  The beast grew to consume the lives of many.

Now, I have a personal peave:  CAPT Balisle’s first day @ CSMTT in 1992 (after his return from the Gulf War as the USN Rep to the air war) was spent in CNSL N5′s office (Bob Crawshaw), as I laid out how to make the CSA an analog of the OPPE,…

And here’s the rest of my addition to the discussion:

as it had been set up a few years earlier as a mini-INSURV by Pete Bulkeley. That was Feb. At a CSA Standardization Conference (at that time, the ISIC’s staffs did some of the CSAs), CAPT Bob Crawshaw asked us how we might retool the process, for a few reasons:

1) To not have it overlap with what INSURV did.
2) To be able to assess readiness in the Combat System’s arena and provide a method to modify the shore based training process based on measured results, in the same manner the Troubled Systems program, designed by CAPT Mort Kenyon and programmed/implemented by CAPT Bob Crawshaw, had done for equipment readiness.

I’ve got the full name of the program for the Combat Systems equipment not right, I’m thinking “Troubled Systems Program” (TSP), as I had the “TTP” (Troubled Training Program) concept tossed in my lap as a result of the discussion. I’ll leave that evolution to another post for the details…

By August, the plan was signed out (actually on the day I first met CDR Joe Sestak…history!) We changed it because the current form was redundant with many material inspections, and had only a hint “are they capable of training?” That changed. we had some checks of material for safety, then we ran the crews in CSTT drills, and did a DTE, which was graded on the INSURV std for that event: “Did the system work to spec?” CSAs were done about annually, and we collected a mountain of info. The plan was to be able to ferret out what knowledge holes and peaks there were in the fleet, to be able to help the shore based system adjust the input training. Almost got there…but I rolled. At the next job, I was actually in Mayport running a trial for the first stages of BFTT on a AEGIS CG, when we heard the new N5 @ CNSL had convinced CNSL to cancel CSAs as worthless…oh…yeah…he was one of the few COs that ever tubed a CSA, but I’m sure there was no agenda behind that.

So, there we were, with teams of 13-20+, going aboard ships (They always said the were glad we were there!) and scouring first the administration and safety, then the capability of the Combat Systems Training Team (CSTT), and finally a “detect to engage” (DTE) to check all but live firing checks of the AAW weapons system aboard. To pass the DTE, the systems couldn’t have any reported faults, then the detection systems had to be within 10% of max range, and simulated weapons had to be employed. Min-INSURV as noted above, but…all of this collected data for deeper analysis.

The point of the Combat Systems Assessment (CSA) was not to collect data, but to assess the ship’s readiness to join up with their respective battle groups for team training at that level. The byproduct was the scores listed on the grading sheets. It was a 3 part, 100 point each part check, using “refined professional subjectivity (for we can never have people be really objective).

My follow on job was managing programs at FCDSSA Dam Neck, one of them being the Battle Force Tactical Training (BFTT) system. Because of my work at the CNSL CSMTT/ATG CSTG, I regularly went to meetings about how to automate training and also what metrics the system could collect. That type of meetings led to me leading a team of very experienced Combat Systems trainers/evaluators from the AEGIS and other communities, to be able to compare the fledging software of BFTT to help in the grading of the training exercises. We did the human thing and the many civil service and contractor “experts” took their readings. It was a great opportunity to look at human reactions in a simulated battle problems, but what’s important in this history: The CSA inspections were canceled the very day we were aboard the TICONDEROGA Class CG conducting this test run.

So, after that person insight, we have VADM Balisle, who literally walked into check in and then rode with CDR Davis and myself to show CAPT Crawshaw my single page PPT Slide (yes, PPT did exist in the early 90s…but Harvard Graphics had been used not long before) about how we could meet his two requirements for a re-organized CSA process, ala the Total Quality Leadership/Management philosophy: Know what you know because you know it!

Consider what information may have been to short stop the horrific degradation of the ability of our ships to execute their missions as warships, if we had been as invested in the combat systems readiness, as we had and have in engineering excellence.

VADM Balisle was a key player in getting this in place, even though it was my staff of an LDO LT (Now CAPT Russ Wycoff, USN (Ret)) and room command full of excellent E-8s and -9s, who all were the team who made it happen.

Because one CO got ripped for failing, then…after a major failure in the combat systems world, got assigned to CNSL Combat Systems Readiness post and got the ear of the new CNSL (after VADM Paul Reason, who ever that was) to cancel what might have been a firewall against future failure.

I have no input now, being out of uniform for over a decade, but it pains me to hear it has gotten like this.

Comments?

And it you were one of those many Division Officers who had to sit with me and discuss PQS, I’d like to hear from you. And CSOs/OPS Bosses who also got to sit and discuss qualifiactions and training…drop me a line.

In rememberance of D-Day today, a story about three men:  An American pilot, an Englishman, and the pilot’s son.

I first met Doug Kirkland in Oct/Nov 1976, while attending Communications Officer School in Newport, RI.  We never really talked, he being a LT, seasoned aviator and me merely an Ensign with no permanent ship assignments in my record.  In Oct, 1989, as I emceed the Change of Command, a face in the guest seats kept attracting my attention.  It was Doug.  At the reception, we both realized we knew each other, but it took about 30 minutes of the “were you ever stationed at…” conversation to finally get us to the point were we figured we had been in Newport for school at the same time, and other than that, our paths had not crossed professionally or otherwise since then.  Fast forward to 2009, when I began going to the every other Saturday breakfasts with a group of local vets…there was Doug again, and one morning, he told me this story and has been kind enough to share it, particularly with the hope the story will maybe connect a few more people who are involved in this story.

Here’s my request:  Pass this story along, please.

A Model of a US Navy PB4Y-l Bureau # 231

English Love Story – Why FAW-7 Loves the people In tbe Devon countryside

This was written by Captain Douglas I. Kirkland ( Delta Air Lines) of Reddington Beach, FL about his father.

My father, Lieutenant Commander Lawrence A. Kirkland, Jr. ( deceased 1990) was a Navy pilot in World War II.  Dad graduated Naval Pilot Training in class 2B41J at the Naval Air Station Jacksonville, Florida early 1941.  During the early part of the war he flew PBY aircraft first in the Pacific Asiatic and later in North Africa. When VPB-U4 was commissioned, Dad was assigned as Plane Commander and according to bis squadronmates, he was one of the “war weary”, well seasoned veterans at the squadrons beginning in August of 1943.

VPB-114 deployed to Dunkeswell Abbey Airfield Near Exeter in Devon, England and this history is well documented at the museum.

To cope with the rigors and stress of the 41 missions Dad dew from Dunkeswell in PB4Y-1 aircraft, be would take a shotgun and hunt on farmland in the Honiton to Broadhembury area just south of Dunkeswell Airfield.   He would then take his fresh kill to The inn at Broadhembury (which still has a great thatched roof’ pub), and have it cooked, dine with his favorite libation in hand, and finally relax a bit.

The Frost Family farm near Broadhembury was a favorite hunting place of Dads, and the descendant of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Frost still lives on the farm today  (John and Jean ( Frost) Barker) Incidentally, both Jean and John Barker remembered my father when I visited them in December of 1998. The Barker’s mentioned that lots of the men stationed at Dunkeswell hunted their farmland and one man in particular liked to hunt rabbits with a Thompson submachine gun (guess the ammunition and the rabbits were plentiful then)!

According to Dad, one day white relaxing at the Inn at Broadhembury, be met a man named Theo Church from Ex-Axminister, a carpenter by trade. Thea Church was making aircraft parts on jigs in his shop for the war effort.  In conversation, Dad discovered that Theo Church had never been in an airplane, even though he was making aircraft parts! Dad invited Theo to go on a training flight from Dunkeswell, and he provided Theo with a flight suit and the necessary instructions for the flight.  All went off with out a hitch, and several months after the flight, Theo Church came to Dad and presented this hand made, wooden model of a P84Y-1 ship 8ureau #231.

Dad asked Theo to keep the model for the duration of the war, and then ship it to me, because of the the “uncertainties” in his schedule and his longevity. Dad later gave the model to me and after he died, I found a scrapbook from WW II with pictures of the actual plane # 231 in a revetment at Broadhembury.  The box, the stamps, the model, everything you see is just as be received it from Theo Church after the war. This model and its history have always symbolized for me, the spirit of cooperation and combined efforts of our countries in defeating our enemies. Truly, the men and women who served our Countries in WW II deserve our eternal gratitude.

For the most part, they were ordinary citizens who performed extraordinarily. When the war ended, they returned to their families and civilian life and built the better World we now enjoy.

I welcome any additions or input from this word of mouth story about my father.

CDR Douglas I. Kirkland, USNR-R (Ret)
16500 Gulf Blvd. Unit 455
North Redington Beach, FL 33708
850-960-8866 cell
727-320-0012 home
douglas.kirkland@1972.usna.com

Captain Meyer Minchen of Houston, Tx., offers the following information about # 231. Jack McGarry ( Plane Captain) and Jim Baird AMM in Crew 11 were prefiighting the plane for a patrol, and were not in the picture at left.   However they did help in identifying the crew members of #231 in VB-114. Left to right: John Paul Woods, Harold Coffin, Cliff Halls, Larry Kirkland, More Slouch, Don Burns, Oren W. Clark (PCP), Meyer Minchen, Ed E. .Elmwood.

So, how about helping out a new mom and daughter who lost their Husband/Father in Afghanistan?

If you’re close to the Tampa bay area, or in it, get down to Paddy Burke’s Irish Pub tomorrow (5/29/10) from 1800 til 2100 (6PM til 9PM for the rest of you) (100 4th St S. St Pete) and make a donation in memory of CPL Jonathon Proto, USMC.

His widow, who is still very much a Marine Wife and troop supporter has put together a fun time for those who also want to say thanks to one who has fallen in the line of duty. Put some of your hard earned money in Ariana’s trust fund for later on. Details here, at A Little Bit of Pink in a World of Camo.

Click for the large image!

And now, a follow up to the burial of CPL Porto. Take a few minutes and get a glimpse of his life and his family and friends at his burial in St Petersburg, FL 3/24/2010:

Porto Tribute Part II from DiamondFilms on Vimeo.

First reported by me at the 60 year anniversary here.

Cpl Desmond T. Doss performed in combat at the level that earned a Congressional Medal of Honor.

Today, I’ll complete my connection to this event, which occurred 47 or 48 years ago. I noted in the May 2005 posting this bit of personal connection:

Somewhere in a box, I have a picture. It is three elementary school children and a blonde German Shepard-Elkhound mix puppy standing next to a monument. The picture was taken in 1962 or 63, and it is my two sisters and I, and our dog, Scooter.

I had forgotten, until my older sister found and scanned the long lost family photo, that our Okinawan neighbor had accompanied us into the sugar cane fields that day.

Click for the full sized image

It was here my father told us a story of a heroic act by a man who had vowed to never kill, yet he would serve his fellow man by ensuring he entered combat, as a medic. Obviously, the story stuck with me, but it was not until about a month before 5/5/2005, that the basic details came pouring back into my head. I searched the net and found I had time to create the post and do it justice. Along the way, I read of a man who not only held to his convictions that day, but since he had been a young boy, and then until (while not at the time) to the day he died in March 2007.

Rather than repeat myself, if you’re so inclined, chase this link to all I have posted about a hero I came to admire from afar.

…in my chosen profession. It was a Monday and I had checked in the prior Saturday night while the USS MILWAUKEE (AOR-2) was moored on the southside of Pier 2 at Norfolk Naval Station. LTJG George Parrish, the Ship’s Navigator was the CDO that Saturday night. He ended up being the first one I carpooled with from the Virginia Beach area to our normal location at NOB.

But on Monday morning, I began real work, after many years of study and almost a year of directly related schooling.

My assignment was to be the Combat Information Center/Electronic Material Officer (CIC/EMO). I met CDR Dave Martin, the XO, LCDR Frank Mueller, the Operations Officer, LT Randy Rice, the Communications Officer, CAPT Richard Wright, the Commanding Officer, and, shortly after lunch, ET2s Mike Krutsch and Craig Johnson, when they needed a set of initials on a CASREP Update. The officer I was relieving was on leave, so I didn’t meet him for a few more days.

But the highlight of the day, was OSC Michael P. McCaffrey. USN, inviting me to the Chief’s Mess for a cup of coffee.

It was a day full of good sea stories, another one was about the schooling of mine being put to work.

It was not my choice to end up on MILWAUKEE, which, was the oldest ship I served abaord at 8 years when I stepped aboard, I got there by failing to make it through the Salvage Diving Course, but it was a blessing in disguise at about the 14 year point in my career.

Sometimes it takes that long to see what’s the right path in a career path, beyond what you thought was good at 22 years old.

My other shipmates I can recall off the top of my head at the moment were LCDR “Doc” Seibart, CDR Karl Kline, and Engineering Duty Officer who was pushing for EDOs to serve aboard ships as Engineers, ENS Harry Watkins, LTJG Cliff Barnes (DCA), LT Pat Wahl (2nd Div), LCDR Leo Pivonka (1st LT), OS3 Tom Mazzula,and many, many more in a crew of about 450 on a 653′ ship that carried 6M gallons of F76/DFM, 2.5M Gallons of AV GAS and later F44/JP-5, 600 tons of cargo ordnance, and then chow and spare parts.

That part of the Navy is now all in the hands of the Military Sealift Command (MSC), but I was lucky to have begun a career as a Naval Professional on a ship where the main mission was seamanship based.

The desecration has begun. A ground-breaking ceremony was held at the Shanksville crash site on Saturday. Bulldozers will start reshaping the land this week. Never mind that the only rule for the Flight 93 memorial’s design competition was that the landscape had to be left as it was. In order to complete the full arc of the Crescent of Embrace (now called a broken circle, but still a giant Islamic-shaped crescent), an earthen causeway will have to be built across the wetlands that lie about 50 vertical feet below the crash site.

A contractor posted recently about his decision to turn down work on the memorial, despite economic hard times. Our friend Jeff just could not stomach the idea of helping to build a tribute to the enemy, a sentiment that is easy to understand and much appreciated. To anyone else who might find themselves in this situation, just be aware that there are other options. Someone is going to do the work, and if the pay is lucrative, it could be better for our cause to have that money go to someone who is on our side.

Blogburst author Alec Rawls has succeeded in driving driving quite a bit of Western Pennsylvania news coverage through the purchase of a half-dozen half-page full-color ads in the local Somerset paper. If anybody wants to fund another, Alec will gladly put the ad together. Call it anti-dhimmi jiu-jitsu. We can use the Park Service’s own money against them.

If we don’t succeed, then you have to live with knowing that you helped to build an abomination. There is no simple answer.

On the subject of worthy causes, long-time blogburst participant Curt at the excellent Flopping Aces blog is helping to orchestrate fundraising for Project Valour-IT, which helps provide voice-controlled computers and other technology to Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines recovering from hand wounds and other severe injuries.

Soldiers Angels, which hosts Valour-IT, is also fundraising for the victims of the jihad attack on Fort Hood.

To join our blogbursts, just send your blog’s url.

Technology.   Someone commented on a blog elsewhere a few weeks back most of mankind’s greatest accomplishments were driven as a function of the need to conduct warfare. I’ll have to go along with that. While going to the moon has had a vast array of technological advancements, it was to help improve our missile/rocket technology and the abilty to function on the “high ground” That being said, there is technology developments, more like a “fusion” of hardware and software to help our wounded warriors. Laptops and Dragon Naturally Speaking. Life changing, capability restoring. Project VALOur-IT running on raw volunteer power and passion. Join up…serve the cause. Change a life. Invest in a future citizen out of uniform.

Just when you’d thought you’d read enough about VALOur-IT, Jeff Bacon a noted naval cartoonist, has done his duty to help promote the fund raising campaign.

Not only has Jeff jumped in, he connected with Steven Pastis, creator of “Pearls Before Swine” (an excellent cartoon strip, I might add) to jointly promote helping our wounded warriors.

Here is the first frame

YOu have to go to Jeff’s post to see the rest of the story.

And…if you still haven’t been convinced to contribute…please reconsider and chip in a few bucks, and send the information to your friends, family and co-workers.

This post will remain at the top of the posts through 11/11/2009, when the drive ends. Look below for new posts.

It begins today, the drive to make a difference for those who have suffered in defense of the nation, and defense of others around the world.

From a practical need for a blogger and a blog reader sprang a project that has now aided over 4000 wounded warriors in getting some normalcy into their lives. The project blog is here.

Even a few bucks adds up. Times are lean, but consider the “leaness” for those who will never recover what they have lost in the service.

Thanks for helping out.

If you have no preference for a service team to donate to, please drop your funds under the Navy, but know they still go into the same pot at the end of the day.

From Error Theory:

The original Crescent of Embrace memorial to Flight 93 faced less than 2° from Mecca. That made it a mihrab, the Mecca-direction indicator around which every mosque is built. (Some mihrabs are pointed-arch shaped, but the classic mihrab is crescent shaped.)

The Park Service dismissed concern about the Mecca-oriented crescent on grounds that the construction drawings had not yet been finalized. “Those trees could move fifty feet, or three hundred feet,” said Project Manager Jeff Reinbold in the Spring of 2006, as if this kind of “tweaking” would make any difference (Crescent of Betrayal Ch.8 p.145-6).

The construction drawings have now been released, and yes, they moved the lower tip of the half-mile wide crescent about 300 feet, enough to change the orientation of the crescent by about 4.5°. Instead of pointing less than 2° north of Mecca, the giant Islamic-shaped crescent now points less than 3° south of Mecca.

Here is the original Crescent of Embrace:

“Qibla” is the direction to Mecca, which you can verify using any online Mecca-direction calculator (just type in Somerset PA). A person standing between the tips of the giant crescent and facing into the center of the crescent (red arrow) would be facing 1.8° north of Mecca, ± 0.1°.

Here is one of the new construction drawings:

Instead of facing a titch north of Mecca, the giant crescent now faces a titch south of Mecca (2.7° south ± 0.1°).

As with the original Crescent design, the upper crescent tip is the end of the 50’ tall Entry Portal Wall and the lower crescent tip is the last of the 50’ tall Maple trees on the bottom. The landscape overlays make the details hard to see in the thumbnail image above, but at full resolution they are fully legible. (Copy of source PDF, without the superimposed orientations lines here. Large file warning. Graphic is on p. 30 of 233.)

The Park Service was SUPPOSED to remove the Islamic symbol shapes

When architect Paul Murdoch’s winning Crescent of Embrace design was announced in September 2005, it appeared to show a bare naked Islamic crescent and star-flag planted atop the crash site:

Burned by the resulting firestorm of protest, the Park Service to agreed to get rid of the Islamic symbol shapes, but they never did. They added an extra arc of trees, and they call it a broken circle now, but the unbroken part of the circle, what symbolically remains standing in the wake of 9/11, is still a giant Islamic shaped crescent.

This is explained on the Park Service’s own website, where the extra arc of trees is explicitly described as a broken off part of the circle:

In summary, the memorial is shaped in a circular fashion, and the circle is symbolically “broken” or missing trees in two places, depicting the flight path of the plane, and the crash site.

Those two breaks are the two ends of the extra arc of trees:

The extra arc of trees extends from blue circle to blue circle, marking the two “breaks” in the circle referred to in the Park Service’s official explanation of the broken-circle design. One is where the flight path breaks the circle (left), the other is near the crash site (center).

What is symbolically left standing (the unbroken part of the circle) is just this:

Remove the symbolically broken off parts, and you get the original Crescent of Embrace design.

The only change is that the crescent has now been rotated clockwise a few degrees. In the construction plans it faces slightly south of Mecca instead of slightly north of Mecca. For a parallel, imagine airline security discovering a terror bomber, then playing with the fit his suicide vest before escorting him to his plane.

They said they were going to remove the giant crescent. They claim they HAVE removed it, but they haven’t. Symbolically, the design remains completely unchanged. The terrorists are still depicted as smashing our peaceful circle and turning it into a giant Islamic-shaped crescent, still pointing to Mecca.

The giant crescent is actually a mihrab

Here is the mihrab at the Great Mosque in Cordoba Spain. Face into the crescent to face Mecca, just like the crescent memorial to Flight 93:

Confronted with evidence that the Crescent of Embrace is actually designed to be the world’s largest mosque, the Park Service sought advice from a pair of Muslim scholars. Both acknowledged the almost exact Mecca-orientation of the giant crescent and both offered overtly dishonest excuses for it. One said not to worry about the likeness to an Islamic mihrab because no one has ever seen a mihrab this BIG before:

…most mihrabs are small, rarely larger than the figure of a man, although some of the more ornamental ones can be larger, but nothing as large at the crescent found in the site design. It is unlikely that most Muslims would walk into the area of the circle/crescent and see a mihrab because it is well beyond their limit of experience.

Right. That’s why everybody scratches their head at Mt. Rushmore. No one has ever seen Abraham Lincoln so BIG before. They just can’t figure it out.

To be fooled by this excuse, you have to really really want to be fooled. The other Muslim scholar said not to worry, the crescent cannot be seen as mihrab unless it points exactly at the Kaaba:

Mihrab orientation is either correct or not. It cannot be off by some degrees.

In fact, a mihrab does NOT have to point exactly at Mecca, for the simple reason that, throughout most of Islamic history, Muslims in far-flung parts of the world had no accurate way to determine the direction to Mecca. As a result, it was established as a matter of religious principle that what matters is intent to face Mecca. This was recently affirmed by Saudi religious authorities, after Meccans realized that even most of their local mosques do not face directly towards the Kaaba. “It does not affect the prayers” assured the Islamic Affairs Ministry.

Faced with evidence of an Islamic plot, why would the Park Service send this evidence exclusively to Muslims for appraisal? Have they forgotten who attacked us on 9/11?

The Service has long since been apprised of the patent dishonesties retailed by its two Muslim advisors but they don’t care. They wanted to be lied to, they knew where to go to be lied to, and they got what they wanted.

Michelle Malkin and Ed Morrissey

So where are the patriotic stalwarts like Michelle Malkin whose objections were instrumental in getting the Park Service to agree to remove the Islamic symbol shapes in the first place? If they knew in 2005 that the symbolic outcome of 9/11 should not be a giant Islamic shaped crescent why are they silent about this exact same symbolism today, after THEY were promised that this perversion would be removed?

Ed Morrissey urged his readers “to tell the National Parks Service and the Secretary of the Interior to rethink their plans,” promising for his own part that “as long as that crescent remains in the design, I’m not donating a red cent to the memorial.” Well Ed, the crescent does remain in the design, so please rejoin the fight.

The desertion of Malkin et. al. makes a difficult gap to fill, but we had better fill it, or the Flight 93 crash-site will soon be home to the world’s largest mosque.

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Admiral John C Harvey, Jr, USN just took over US Fleet Forces 7/24/2009 and launched his blog.

Top level forward thinkers, engaging the world and his sailors. BZ, Admiral and welcome to the blogosphere and all that comes with it.