So there is an apparent conspiracy theory that the Ford was hit on the fantail by a Yemeni missile. The commenter who posted this theory here says the missile hit in the “open area near the fantail.” This is a picture of the ship arriving in Croatia:
The “open area of the fantail” is the jet engine shop, which is located on the first deck directly aft of the hanger bay. That’s where technicians repair the jet engines installed on the ship’s embarked aircraft. The ship’s laundry is 20 feet below the waterline on the sixth deck at frame 215, which is about about 160 feet further forward than the fantail. (In case you are wondering, the compartment is 6-215-1-Q My berthing compartment, the place where I lived for five years, was on the second deck, directly below that jet engine shop. Located below that on the third and fourth decks are the ship’s steering gear. Those steering gear rooms are vital to ship operation, and she couldn’t maneuver without them. For that reason, those areas of the ship are armored with fairly thick walls, and those are in turn surrounded by void compartments that are designed to be blown up to absorb the force of the explosion. I spent a year standing watch in those steering gear rooms as the aft steering gear electrician.
There is no visible damage to the area. This is the rather normal looking ass end of a supercarrier. Here is a picture of it in port. If you look closely, you will see a barge tied to the aft end of the ship. When a carrier is anchored in foreign ports, that barge is tied there to allow tenders to loan and unload, then people and supplies can be brought into the carrier through a ramp that is lowered from the rear of the ship. Sailors refer to that barge as a “camel,” not to be confused with the fire stations of the same name.
If there had been a weapon that hit the aft end of the ship, and it was bad enough to be a mission kill, there would be visible damage, and the ship would have needed more than 5 days in port. Not only that, but the crew would not have been granted liberty.
The world is watching, and there is no way that Yemen hitting the ship would have been ignored and suppressed by the entire world. In fact, it is a genius move for the Trump administration to have sent the Ford to Croatia- because it lets the world see that the ship was not suffering battle damage.
I get it- people want the US to fail. They want it so badly, that they will spread garbage like this. However, this fire was nothing more than the things that happen to a Navy ship that has been at sea for nearly a year of continuous operations.
A great example of the bullshit being tossed out there is this article. It shows the Ford in port and the reader is left with the impression that this is a picture of the Ford in Split, Croatia.
Except that isn’t Croatia, it’s Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia. The earliest example of it I can find is from October of 2017. If you look closely, the port side CIWS isn’t there, no aircraft are there, and the area it’s in doesn’t even look like Split.
After leaving the Azores, we had a day at sea. We rode some bumper cars then played some games in the sports bar over a few cocktails.
The day after that, we spent the day in Lisbon, Portugal. No, the people who live here aren’t called Lisbians, but they probably should be. We had a good day touring the city, the people who lived here were friendly and gracious. The city was beautiful:
The cathedrals in Europe are filled with superior art and craftsmanship. The amount of skilled labor it took to build them simply amazes me. This one is over 300 years old:
Before returning to the ship, we stopped at a large shopping mall, and while we were in there, we got some lunch. That’s where a bit of trouble kicked in. Google translate allows you to point your camera at something that’s printed in a different language, and the software alters the image so it appears in English.
While translating the menu, there was an item called lagartas, which Google dutifully translated to lizards. We weren’t feeling all that adventurous, so we ordered the pork and pineapples.
It turns out that Google is a bit literal. Lagartas is a dish made from thinly sliced Iberain ham, and has nothing to do with reptiles. The hazards of dealing with other languages.
On the way out of the mall, we stopped at a small bakery and got a traditional Portuguese egg custard tarts, Pastel de Nata. These things are incredible. I’m glad we only got a few of these, because I could easily gain some weight with these things.
With our stomachs full, it was time to leave Lisbon, but I would not mind returning at all. As we left port, I snapped this picture:
More ports, more travelling- tune in tomorrow as we enter Spain.
Four years later, unknown persons mailed him a felony about of THC oil, which the Feds were somehow tipped off to, which allowed the ATF to raid his house, then charged him with 50 counts of possession of a firearm by a drug user.
If convicted, he was facing over 200 years in prison. He then agreed to a guilty plea for Possession with Intent to Distribute in exchange for the remainder of the charges being dropped. He served his 56 days in Federal prison, and now his show is gone, and his voice has been silenced.
A nut job leftist burned down his place of employment because he didn’t think he was being paid enough. OK, that’s bad enough, but fellow lefties are cheering him on and calling for more of the same.
Power is with the people! If more people did this or stood up against corporations, trust me, they will all crumble without us, the people.
Unfortunately there's just soo many bootlickers within us that care more about corporation's than they do themselves.
Fucking commies. Here in Florida, setting fire to an occupied structure is a forcible felony. Even if your employer doesn’t allow firearms, it would still be legal to use deadly force to prevent this. Warehouses are full of interesting things like box cutters and hammers.
As I have said before, we are already in CW2, it’s just most people don’t realize it yet.
I know this post isn’t exactly timely, but it’s something I have wanted to talk about for the past several weeks. This is just the first chance I’ve had to write it all down.
There is a segment of the left that hates President Trump and this nation so much, they want the US to be defeated in every way. That includes the reported fire that reportedly occurred on the USS Ford. They are screaming about how it must have been an Iranian missile, and have come out as experts on Naval warfare, firefighting, and all things military. They are all incorrect. I will discuss the basic damage control for a Navy ship at sea. In port is a different story that is beyond the scope of this post and won’t be discussed.
Every sailor has received some training in boot camp on damage control, but it’s a rudimentary training at best. In smaller ships, a fire will generally cause the captain to put the ship at battle stations so the crew can fight the fire. The same is true on an aircraft carrier, except aircraft carriers are large and there is always a lot going on. When an aircraft carrier goes to battle stations, nearly half of the crew is assigned to damage control, to include firefighting. The ship has too much going on at all times to do this lightly, so for small fires, there is a dedicated fire department that is there to handle smaller incidents and prevent the ship’s crew from having to go to battle stations several times per week.
The capabilities of the ship’s damage control are fairly robust.
The fire party is broken into different areas. There is one segment, crash and salvage (colloquially referred to as ‘crash and smash’) whose job is to fight fires on the flight deck and hanger bay. You will sometimes see them on television and movies wearing “silver suits.” The second segment of the fire party is called the nucleus fire party. That is a team of 23 damage control specialists and 2 electricians whose job it is to fight fires everywhere else on the ship- from the nuclear power plant, to the weapons magazines, berthing spaces, you name it.
There is a sprinkler system on the ship that is capable of releasing firefighting foam or seawater through sprinkler heads in the hanger bay and on the flight deck. When aircraft are aboard, there are men on watch in armored booths whose job is to watch for fires in the hanger. They can close large armored doors remotely and activate those sprinklers as well as sound the alarm if there should be a fire. The ship has more than two dozen fire pumps capable of sending more than 35,000 gallons per minute of seawater into the ship’s fire mains. Magazines have flooding systems that can flood a magazine with seawater to prevent an explosion.
Repair Lockers, aka Damage Control Lockers
If all of that fails, the ship can go to battle stations. One of the things this does is close all watertight doors, separating the ship into ten different watertight compartments. On top of that, each of those watertight compartments has a “repair locker” inside of it. These lockers are actually rooms that are about the size of a large living room in a home, and are filled with firefighting and other damage control equipment, as well as detailed drawings of the locker’s area of responsibility. When the crew is at battle stations, each of those lockers has several dozen crew members assigned to it, commanded by an officer, a chief petty officer, and other enlisted personnel.
Also located throughout each compartment are smaller teams of sailors (8 or 9 to a team) who also have smaller stashes of firefighting equipment. Also located throughout the entire ship are ‘camels’, stations with connections to the fire main and a couple of hundred feet of fire hose.
In all, there are about 1,000 sailors on a Nimitz carrier who are assigned to damage control when a ship is at battle stations.
I spent five of my six years in the Navy on a Nimitz class aircraft carrier, the USS Eisenhower. During my first two years on the ship, I was assigned to a small firefighting team located just under the flight deck for my battle station. Then my battle station was moved to the aft hanger deck to be in repair 1A. For my last year or so, I was then assigned to the engineering plant and no longer did damage control. I was also one of the electricians on the Nucleus Fire Party for about two years.
When an aircraft carrier is at sea, they tend to have fires. It’s a huge industrial activity with thousands of tons of explosives, millions of gallons of jet fuel, two nuclear power plants, 50 or 60 aircraft, and literally thousands of ignition sources. As I recall, we would average a fire or two every week while we were at sea. Things like welding, electrical fires, fires in trash cans, and even fires in heat generating spaces like the ship’s laundry, one of the two power plants, and even involving aircraft. It happens.
So that’s the background. Now to what I think may have happened:
A fire could have begun in the laundry. The first indication would be someone reporting smoke. The nucleus fire party would be called out to investigate:
Ringing bell on the announcing system (the “1MC”) then three dings (three dings means in the aft part of the ship) “Ranch hand, ranch hand, ranch hand, away the nucleus fire party. Investigate white smoke in the area of the ship’s laundry. Compartment [Deck]-[Frame]-[Compartment]-[Compartment Use] (e.g., 3-120-3-Q). Use repair 1 alpha.”
The party would locate and begin fighting the fire. At some point, the team recognizes that the fire is beyond their capabilities, and the officer in charge would recommend to the chain of command that the ship go to general quarters. If the Captain concurs, it would sound like this:
At this point, personnel assigned to that repair locker will arrive and take over firefighting from the Nucleus fire party, or would work alongside of them, as determined by the chain of command. The DCA (Damage Control Assistant, a Lt Commander, or O4 who assists the Chief Engineer, who is the ship’s damage control officer) would direct firefighting efforts aided by his staff in Damage Control Central, a control room amidships, located next to the #2 Reactor’s Main Machinery Room. At this point, the repair locker personnel in that area of the ship, plus the nucleus fire party, would have meant about 200 people would be fighting the fire. The area around the laundry is a machinery area: the firefighting materials and supplies in that area are plentiful. It’s below the main deck, so the bulkheads in that area are stout and designed to contain water and fire.
The fire would have been contained fairly quickly, and I remain skeptical of the reports from the MSM, claiming it took more than 30 hours to put out the fire. The USS Forrestal caught fire in 1967, that fire was HUGE, involving the detonation of multiple tons of explosives and hundreds of gallons of jet fuel, and it only took 18 hours to completely extinguish.
I know some of you are likely thinking of the USS Bonhomme Richard, but that was a different animal. It’s a fire that happened in port, the watertight hatches couldn’t be closed because they were blocked by temporary cables and hoses passing through them due to repair work, and most of the crew wasn’t on board. That can’t be compared to a warship steaming in wartime conditions.
The reports I saw of unlivable berthing spaces and sailors sleeping on the floor is likely due to the loss of power to the berthing spaces, caused by damage to electrical cables that passed through the fire area. Naval ships have electrical cables that run through nearly every compartment, up near the overhead. A fire in a compartment can damage those cables, thus cutting off electricity and ventilation to other spaces, even spaces located quite far away from the actual fire. It’s my guess that this is what happened.
It doesn’t take action by the enemy to cause damage like we saw. This is reinforced in me by the fact that the Ford was in and out of the repair facility in a matter of days. The crew themselves could repair much of this damage themsleves, assuming they had all of the needed parts. When I was a workcenter supervisor, I had a large store of secret parts that were not on my approved list of spares. Any good NCO will tall you that they have resources unknown to the chain of command. I know I had several thousand feet of various sized cables, parts, boxes, clamps, and numerous electrical transformers that had been ‘liberated’ from a storage yard in the shipyard, and that is in addition to the hundreds of tons of parts an aircraft carrier has in official store rooms.
In a case like this, I would have had every electrician pulling cable whenever they weren’t doing anything to further the mission. Much of the damage would have been fixed in a matter of 2 or 3 weeks. When I was aboard, there were over 200 electricians on the ship. That number of skilled electricians can pull a lot of cable within a couple of weeks. I can still draw parts of the ship’s electrical system from memory, because we were required to know that in order to stand certain watch stations.
As an aside, nothing discussed in this post is classified. There are certain cases where some of the things I wanted to share were classified, and those were intentionally left out of the story or even altered slightly in ways that did not materially change the facts or story, so as to protect classified material.
Also, I possess no specific knowledge of what happened onboard the USS Ford, but I am familiar with carrier electrical systems and actually helped to write an SOP for electrical systems damage control and watch standing duties when I was in, but I am certain that those SOPs have changed in the 30 plus years since I served. Still, the general principles are still in place.
The Seventh Day of the crossing, and we arrived in the Azores at Ponta Delgada. We spent the day on a bus tour of the island. The Azores, being volcanic islands, are rocky islands. Still, there was a fairly large amount of farmland.
On our tour, we wound up at the top of the caldera of a large volcano. From there, you can see the city at the bottom, Sete Cidades. It’s breathtaking. The city is next to the lake that is located at the bottom of a large caldera, 3 miles across at its widest, and 1300 feet from the rim to the bottom. The views from the rim are amazing. This picture doesn’t do the view justice. Those homes you see in this picture are more than 1000 feet below, and a mile away. The wind blowing up from the bottom of the caldera is fairly strong, I would estimate around 30 miles per hour or so.
After spending the day here, the ship left port, headed to our next stop. More on that later.
My second post of the day has been delayed, on account of myself and Turbo Tax trying to get my taxes done. This is a project I thought was (nearly) complete two months ago, but there was more left to be done than I realized. This post will have to do, I guess.
Alas, the BBB passed by Trump has skinned away many of my deductions of past years, thus forcing me to pay more in taxes. I am trying earnestly to keep that number to a minimum, but many deductions begin to phase out or become eliminated at an income of $146,000 for a couple, and that really isn’t a very high number.
The final bill is that I still owe slightly less than $3,000. In total, I paid more than $61,000 this year in taxes. The report from Amazon alone says I paid $1400 in sales taxes. It’s infuriating to see those numbers, then see people on Social Media saying taxes need to be raised. Why, I asked one of them, should someone who makes more pay a higher rate? If the percentage is the same for everyone, a person making $100k would pay 5 times in taxes what a person making $20k. That isn’t enough though. Some say that no one should have more than X amount of money.
The answer? Because, he said, they can afford it.
So because someone has more than you, you feel it is your place to steal what they have earned.
If someone takes my money for his own benefit, he is a thief.
If someone takes my money to feed his child, he is still a thief.
If someone takes my money at gunpoint, he is a robber and a thief.
If ten people take my money at gunpoint, they are a gang of thieves.
If a thousand of my neighbors take my money, they are no better.
If they all vote to have someone else take my money at gunpoint, at some point the left feels that this is legitimate.
The answer I get is “well, that’s called taxes.” I say bullshit. Taxes are so the government can provide for the general welfare. Taking someone’s money so courts, the military, and other services everyone benefits from is providing for the general welfare. Taking that money so Sharkeesh’a Negron and Juan Illegal* can sit at home and pop out a dozen kids without having to produce anything is not. It’s theft.
OK, I’m just working myself up, thinking that it takes me several months of work to pay my taxes.
To say the least, I am pretty grumpy and there will be some alcohol involved this evening. Of course, it will be taxed.
This is installment two of my three week vacation. The first day is found here. If you aren’t interested in my travels, you are free to skip this one, I won’t be offended. Once I am done with this post, I need to finish my taxes up, so the next post might be later in the afternoon or evening.
Having spent the night at a Marriott hotel in Jersey City, we got up early the next morning and went to breakfast at a Krispy Kreme that was a block over. Went back to the hotel, showered, and headed out to the port in an Uber.
The ship was the Odyssey of the Seas. After checking in to our Junior Suite, 200 square feet of living space. The room has a queen bed, plenty of cabinet space, one and a half baths, a desk, and a small 80 square foot balcony. The best benefits are access to the suite restaurant and the double points you get. A 15 night cruise gets you 30 points. Since we have over 400 points, we get 5 free drinks anywhere on the ship, and as frequent gamblers, we also drink free in the casino.
I am going to just compress the first six days of the cruise into one post. We didn’t stop anywhere since we were crossing the Atlantic, so all of the days were pretty much alike. Being that we were sailing on the North Atlantic in the spring, the weather was a bit rough. Since this was the North Atlantic in the Spring, we were in some rough seas for the crossing. I’m talking 40-50 knot winds and 15-20 foot seas. That means the outside decks were closed. I wouldn’t want to be in the pool anyhow, because temperatures were in the mid-50s. Here is a video I shot from a lounge that was on the 4th deck, meaning we were about 40 feet above the ocean. Due to a lack of scale, those waves look smaller than they were, but you get the idea.
The meals were great. I ate things like duck confit, filet mignon, veal pasta, sea bass, onion soup (my favorite soup), and other gourmet dishes for dinner. The best soup of the cruise was seafood volute, and it was a very silky soup with a distinct lobster flavor, almost like lobster bisque. We rarely had lunch, but on those days we did, we had sushi, a nice surf and turf, and hibachi. Breakfast was usually just something small like a donut or something. Here is a picture of the second course of day three’s lunch.
I had forgotten to take a picture until I had eaten some, but you can see that the food is fairly good. I can’t believe that neither of us gained any weight, eating like this.
During the day, we did things like ride bumper cars, play laser tag, or sit in the sports bar playing games like Jenga and connect four. There was also a British pub onboard, as well as plenty of activities like bar trivia and the like. The laser tag was great. I think we played 4 or 5 times, and it is great practice for clearing rooms and moving around corners.
In the evening, we spent time in the casino but these first few days was rough. I had one night where I was ahead by $400, and 4 or 5 nights when I lost my ass. All in all, the casino was rough. By the end of the six days, I was down about $2000. We also had time to see a number of shows. The entertainment was pretty good. A few nights we sat in the music hall and listened to the band- called the “High C’s Horns.” The band was pretty good. I thought I had video of them, but can’t find it. Instead, here is video of the entrance to the casino:
The crossing ended on day 7 with our first port visit, which I will cover tomorrow.
We carry a pistol just in case we find ourselves in a gun fight. If we know we will be in a gunfight, the best option is to not be there. Failing that, we should bring the most gun we can, along with a lot of friends who also bring the most gun they can. Still, that’s inconvenient to do 24/7. My friends and I can’t live our lives as if we were a Marine platoon about to be ambushed.
So we carry a pistol. Most people spend a lot of time trying to find the one perfect carry pistol. Experienced shooters eventually realize something different:
There is no perfect gun—only the best gun for today’s constraints.
What I’ve built is a four-tier carry system that scales with clothing, concealment, and performance needs. It’s not just practical—it’s exactly how I maximize capability without sacrificing consistency.
Smith & Wesson Model 642 Airweight (Pocket Carry)
This is the “always gun.” It has some advantages: Extremely light (~18 oz loaded) Minimal grip height → very low printing Works in gym shorts, light clothing, or no-belt situations. I can drop it in my shorts pocket as I head out the door, and now I am armed for a quick run to the store. In Florida’s heat and humidity, this is far more important than you realize. It’s rounded profile hides well in pockets, it’s highly reliable regardless of grip or draw angle.
The disadvantages are low capacity, and they are nearly impossible to reload. This revolver doesn’t deal with speed strips or speedloaders very well, so this pistol is 5 shots and done. Not only that, but with this extremely short barrel, high pressure loads aren’t possible, meaning the bullets are just not great performers.
This relegates the J frame to a niche role: The gun you carry when carrying anything else is difficult or unlikely. The reality is this is not my most capable gun, but it’s the one that ensures I’m never unarmed, not even for a quick run to the store. It’s my “get off of me” gun that I will push into an attacker’s midsection and pull the trigger 5 quick times, an “oh shit” gun.
Concealable IWB Upgrade: Smith & Wesson M&P Shield Plus (10-round)
This is where you step into a true fighting handgun while staying highly concealable. The advantages here are the Shield has a thin, flat profile, which makes for excellent IWB concealment. The ten round magazine capacity is double that of the 642. The 9mm has better terminal performance than the J frame, the reloads are faster and more easily accomplished, the handgun is more controllable than a snub revolver, and the XS DXT sights on mine are exponentially better than the sights on that pocket pistol.
I carry my 9mm with 124gr +P gold dots. That bullet is a proven performer, and in the +P loading, it is a superior performer. I will admit that I own compact automatic pistols in 9mm, .40S&W, .45ACP, .357Sig, and .380ACP. Bullet design has come a long way, and in a sub-4 inch barrel and limited magazine size, 9mm is equal in performance to any of the others.
That places this pistol in the role of best balance of concealability and capability when I can wear a belt and holster. Still, it’s the pistol I carry least often, as it is only marginally more concealable than my tier 3 gun:
Smith & Wesson M&P Shield Plus Performance Center (Ported + Microdot, 13-round)
The most useful carry gun I have. It’s an optimized defensive system. The advantages here over the stock shield plus are faster follow-up shots and target reacquisition due to the compensated porting and the microdot sight. A thirteen round magazine gives me enough firepower to face multiple attackers without reloading. This is, in my opinion, the best EDC pistol that I own. It’s my primary carry gun when concealment allows slightly more size and weight.
Some time has passed since I bought this pistol in 2021. I bought it with the intention of volunteering for the Guardian program that turned out to be a farce. The only thing that was wrong with it is the Crimson Trace microdot failed and I replaced it with a Holosun about two years ago.
Tier 4: Smith & Wesson M&P 10mm M2.0
This is my no-compromise option. Advantages:
Full-power 10mm performance
Superior penetration and energy
Larger grip and sight radius
Maximum capability in worst-case scenarios
I carry this one when clothing allows full concealment (jackets, winter wear) and want full power available. That doesn’t happen often here in Florida. Maybe 30 or 40 days out of the year. This is not about convenience, it’s about maximum capability when concealment constraints disappear. Loaded with full power Underwood 180 grain XTP, which gives me 1300 fps and 676 foot pounds. This is great for delivering a lot of energy into a target wearing heavy clothes or behind a barrier like a car door. The only real disadvantage here is the size of the handgun and the risk of overpenetration. When I can carry a large boat anchor of a handgun, this is my go-to.
Summing It Up
What makes this system effective isn’t just the guns—it’s the decision-making framework behind it. I’m doing something most people don’t: Adapting my carry gun to the environment instead of forcing one gun into every situation.
When concealment is hardest → I still carry (642) When possible → I upgrade capability (Shield) When conditions allow → I maximize performance (PC Shield / 10mm)
Are any of my readers doing anything like this? Let me know in the comments.
This absence was two years in the making. My wife spent countless hours planning this, and forcing me to go to stupid timeshare sales pitches. So where was I? I was in Europe for the past three weeks. I will spend a few bytes over a few posts detailing my trip. The reason for the lack of posting? We all know how the EU feels about freedom of speech, so I wasn’t about to access this blog, lest I find myself in some European prison because some Islamist or Eurofag took offense at something I once said on here. I had originally scheduled a bunch of posts to cover things during my absence. I usually do when I am travelling. In this case, my scheduled posts sat there and didn’t post, showing a “failed scheduled” status. WordPress glitch, I suppose. For that reason, the posting on this blog didn’t happen as it was supposed to. The “OPSEC” post was scheduled for the last day in March. It didn’t post until nearly a week later. I didn’t know that until I was airborne over the Atlantic on my way home.
The planning for this trip began two years ago. The time share pitches were through Hilton. It seems that you get a lot of Hilton Honors points if you sit through sales pitches for their timeshare product. My wife would use those points to get us all sorts of things- more on that later, but it turns out those pitches (5 of them in total) wound up saving us about $8 thousand, and we didn’t even have to spend any money on a time share. I guess it was time well spent. My wife is good about finding deals like this.
The time for the trip began with a flight to New Jersey. We left the house and our cats in the possession of our trusted house sitters and headed off to the Orlando airport. As usual, air travel was horrific. We were supposed to land in Newark, but we were stuck orbiting in the area due to unfavorable winds for about 15 minutes. Then it seems the pilot must have only put five bucks’ worth of gas in the plane, because we had to divert to New York’s JFK to get fuel. We were informed the fueling would take about 3 hours, and we were free to leave the plane and drive to Newark, but our checked bags would have to stay on the plane to be retrieved later. We decided to stay.
After fueling, the plane took off and spent an hour flying the eighteen miles to Newark. In all, our original plan to arrive in the hotel in Jersey City by 6pm was thwarted- we didn’t get to the hotel until nearly 1am. I will continue the story tomorrow-
