Watch your Aim……
The captain of LABOON (DDG 58) was relieved of command on 19 December for “loss of confidence” after a 15 July 1997 incident when the destroyer fired four five-inch rounds near a fishing trawler off the Virginia coast. LABOON is scheduled to participate in JTFX 98-1 during January and early February, then deploy on 26 February from Norfolk for a Mediterranean/Persian Gulf deployment with the JOHN C. STENNIS (CVN 74) Battle Group.
Go Get Em…..
McINERNEY (FFG 8) continued a Caribbean/Central America counter-narcotics deployment with the Joint Interagency Task Force (JIATF) during November and December. On 12 November, she pursued a suspected “go fast” speedboat drug smuggler in the Caribbean, firing 200 rounds of .50 caliber and 10 rounds of 76 millimeter ammunition, eventually causing the craft to go dead in the water about 30 miles east of the Costa Rica/Nicaragua border. The embarked Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachment (LEDET) boarded the vessel, which was determined to be stateless, and later transferred the craft and crew to the Colombian navy.
Look out where you put that thing…..
HEALY (WAGB 20) launched 15 November at Avondale Shipyards, New Orleans, Louisiana. The sideways-delivery launch created a wave that inundated a number of people on a viewing stand, causing several minor injuries and sending eleven people to a hospital for treatment. Meanwhile, a dispute over the character of the ship’s namesake, who served in the 19th century as the captain of the cutter BEAR, is unlikely to result in a name change. The icebreaker is scheduled for delivery in February 1999.
.10 cents a minute…..or else
An F/A-18 HORNET of VFA-125 narrowly missed hitting two civilian telephone workers with gunfire when it opened fire on an observation tower near the workers at the Bravo 20 aviation training range of NAS Fallon, Nevada, on 29 October. The pilot apparently mistook the tower for his intended target. The tower was hit, but neither of the telephone company employees, who were working on a phone box on a fence surrounding the target, was injured.
Oh yeah sure….
The Associated Press on 23 November reported that a “senior military official” revealed that a Russian “OSCAR II”-class nuclear-powered missile submarine maneuvered near the CONSTELLATION (CV 64) off the coast of Washington State in late September. The AP report quoted the official as saying, “The United States knew about it, it was tracked. There was no danger” to the carrier. “If we’d been at war, we wouldn’t have let it get even close.” The Washington Times newspaper reported on 23 November that the same submarine cruised off the Washington State coast, practiced “attack operations” against the CARL VINSON (CVN 70), and shadowed the NIMITZ (CVN 68) before returning to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskyy on 1 November.