Having forgotten many Naval heroes and distinguished ships of the past, the Navy named a Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, DDG 117, after an obscure political horse-holder for various Democrats, including LBJ, Saturday. The ceremony took place at one of the yards that builds these ships, Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Mississippi.
The future USS Paul Ignatius is named in honor of the Honorable Paul Ignatius, who served as assistant secretary of defense for installations and logistics and later as secretary of the navy between 1967 and 1969, both under President Lyndon B. Johnson. Ignatius had previously served as a commissioned lieutenant in the Navy during World War II. The future USS Paul Ignatius will be the first ship to bear his name.
So we’ll have a ship named after this obscure bureaucrat from LBJ’s micromanagement of Vietnam, one of Macnamara’s Harvard Business School beancounters, but we haven’t had one named after Esek Hopkins since 1945, or John Glover since 1990, or Abe Whipple since 1992, and that’s just distinguished Revolutionary War Naval heroes.
Who was behind this? As it turns out, the outgoing social justice warriors who have gutted the Navy rushed to lock in names for the Navy’s ships through 2024. While some ships were named after Medal of Honor heroes — mostly Marines — a number were named with a social message in mind. One Burke-class is named for a pioneering Navy… nurse. Others for service members whose distinction was to be a member of a particular race. Others… bedamned if they didn’t name one for Arleigh Burke (who deserves it if only for fighting the Kennedy brothers within an inch of court-martial to try to save Brigada 2506).
But Ignatius is puzzling. At least the nurse was the first Navy head nurse (stop snickering, you in the back rows). Why Ignatius, who wasn’t first at anything?
Well, when you read the following, bear in mind that his son is Washington Post columnist and Washington society kingpin David Ignatius.
“When the future USS Paul Ignatius joins the fleet, it will serve for decades as a reminder of Secretary Ignatius’s service to our nation as both a naval officer and as the civilian leader of our Navy and Marine Corps,” said the Honorable Sean Stackley, acting secretary of the navy. “This ceremony will honor not only the service of this ship’s distinguished namesake but also the service of our nation’s shipbuilders, who, for centuries, have helped make ours the greatest Navy in the world.”
It will serve for decades as a reminder that a guy named Sean Stackley wanted to give a slobbering tonguebath to a fellow Washington glitterato. Who knows, maybe if there’s a United States when the Ignatiuses and Stackleys are done profiting from underselling it, there will be a ship named USS Sean Stackley some day.
If there’s going to be a United States to do something that stupid, the US and particularly the US Navy has to pull its head out of its bilge drain with utmost dispatch.
Here is the Navy’s boilerplate on what DDG-117 is and what it can do.
Paul Ignatius will be the 67th Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, the fifth of 14 ships currently under contract for the DDG 51 program. The DDG 51 class provides advanced combat capability and survivability characteristics while minimizing procurement and lifetime support costs due to the program’s maturity. DDG 51 destroyers are warships that provide multi-mission offensive and defensive capabilities. Destroyers can operate independently or as part of carrier strike groups, surface action groups, amphibious ready groups and underway replenishment groups. DDG 113 and follow-on DDGs are being built with integrated air and missile defense (IAMD) capability.
Of course, you probably wonder who the hell Esek Hopkins, John Glover, Abraham Whipple were. Hopkins was the first commander of the Continental Navy, who was ultimately sacked because he couldn’t outbid privateers for seamen. Glover was the first commander of a commissioned US ship, also the hero of the evacuation of Long Island and the crossing of the Delaware, therefore the First of the Gators, although he was technically an Army officer. Whipple, originally a privateer for the British against the French in the Seven Years’ War, was arguably the Colonies’ first naval victor — in 1772, he led the burning of His Majesty’s Ship Gaspee, which had run hard aground. Later he served both as a naval officer and (more lucratively) as a privateer, capturing dozens of British ships (once, 11 at once). The British captured him in 1780, and then his war was over.
Of Revolutionary War naval officers of distinction, only John Paul Jones and John Barry have active units named for them. And the motto of Barry was at some recent time changed to, we are not making this up, Strength and Diversity. Diversity is Our Vibrancy!
And the ship after DDG-117, DDG-118, will be named for… another politician, but at least a distinguished one, and a decorated veteran: Daniel Inouye.
Kevin was a former Special Forces weapons man (MOS 18B, before the 18 series, 11B with Skill Qualification Indicator of S). His focus was on weapons: their history, effects and employment. He started WeaponsMan.com in 2011 and operated it until he passed away in 2017. His work is being preserved here at the request of his family.
31 thoughts on “Cling-On SJWs Still Naming Ships for Obscure Politicians”
Do USN ships have crests, like RN and RAN ones do? Perhaps it’s better if they don’t, forget I asked; whatever crest the USS Harvey Milk carries, it should not be seen, and preferably, be left drifting in Iranian waters with a massive scuttling charge wired to the gangplank. I mean, the old joke about the golden rivet was revolting enough in fiction, but to actually celebrate it….
Yes, they do have crests; at least they used to; and no I don’t want to imagine what that one would be.
Poseidon has a sense of ironic humor.
The Harvey Milk will probably founder when the packing seals blow out around the prop shafts, after being torpedoed astern.
Hereabouts, he’s famous mainly for dying in a lead-induced permanent coma, caused by a twinkie-fuelled rage gone pear-shaped, and inflicting DiFi on the entire country, instead of just the environs of Frisco.
***Hereabouts, he’s famous mainly for dying in a lead-induced permanent coma, caused by a twinkie-fuelled rage gone pear-shaped, and inflicting DiFi on the entire country, instead of just the environs of Frisco.***
A pal of mine, also a former tanker in Germany, took over our old 3-tank HQ company tank section after I left it to run our battalion’s AVLB tank chassis-mounted assault bridges and other engineer-related jobs in the outfit. He got out, went back home to San Fransicko, and joined SFPD. Being slightly involved in the Sara Jane Moore murder try on President Gerald Ford, he made inspector right shortly thereafter. And for his break-in partner as a rookie detective at the SFPD Northern Station, he got Dan White, a 101 Airborne vet and later former SF Cop and decorated fireman, later yet a SF Board of Supervisors member.
Having resigned from the fire Dept, to take the Supervisors job, White resigned from the Supervisors Board naming the practices in the office as corrupt. He later tried to get reappointed to his Supervisor’s position by fellow Supervisor George Moscone, but Moscone refused. White went to the SF City Hall Building supposedly to meet again with Supervisors but bringing his .38 handgun and 10 rounds. After Moscone again refused to reinstate him, he shot and killed Moscone, then went to Milk’s office and killed him with 5 shots, the last 2 being muzzle-contact certainty headshots. He then went to the North station and surrendered and was charged with the two killings. Instead of two Murder One convictions, White was found guilty of Voluntary Manslaughter, was sentenced to 7 years in prison and was out in 5. In 1985, White’s wife left him and he hooked a garden hose from the exhaust pipe of his car to its inside. The divorce/separation/loneliness probably had more to do with White killing himself than any guilt or remorse for ridding SF of a couple of crooked and bent politicians.
***Poseidon has a sense of ironic humor.***
Concur.
I was motivated to join the Navy and become a gunners mate after reading about GM3 Paul Henry Carr. Look him up. The Wikapedia entry seems to be accurate. I wonder what type of sailor will be motivated by reading about Harvey Milk. No, I guess I don’t want to know.
The character in the sailor suit from the movie Hail, Caesar! is my first guess. (There’s a big production number in which, the night before shipping out, the sailors sing about the miseries of months at sea with “no dames.” It’s chock-full of gay double-entendres).
They had an open casket for Harvey Milk, he was face down so his friends could recognize him.
Rimshot!
I presume the crest of the USS Harvey Milk (God Preserve Us All) features something rampant.
I simply can’t imagine any man being motivated to serve, fight and mybe die on The Mighty Milk. How could such a name have been proposed or allowed?
Two words: Ray Mabus.
His mission was not to strengthen, or even sustain, the Navy. He set out from the start, with support at the highest levels, to change the Navy.
But what’s the big deal? As Churchill supposedly observed, sodomy is nothing new afloat.
As to the crest, it had better feature a rainbow and be fabulous, or Mabus’s whole tenure was a waste….
…which it certainly was for those of us who still care for the actor formerly known as the US Navy.
One must observe that Mr. Churchill was referring to the Royal Navy.
There must be some way to undo or “reset” these travesties.
On the other side of the ledger, we have the USS Thomas Hudner, DDG 116:
https://www.navytimes.com/articles/uss-thomas-hudner
I actually have met that distinguished officer a number of times. Supposedly they are making a movie about his act of heroism. Despite the heroism, he was unsuccessful in saving his shipmate.
He told me personally that they weren’t close, just two guys in the squadron. Now as a movie gets closer they are being portrayed as best buds. Whatever. It can be a great movie, if they tread lightly on the inevitable White Men Evil and Tortured Gays subplots.
Missing word?
“If there’s [not] going to be a United States to do something that stupid,”
Dan Inouye was a distinguished SOLDIER; he was a shitty gun-grabbing politician.
Apparently, naming it Pol Ignoramus was considered too spot-on.
Rest assured the crew, and everyone not assigned to the ship, will rectify the oversight in all unofficial correspondence.
Speaking of LBJ—
http://b26mhs.bizland.com/index.php/component/mtree/unknown/28-lbj-s-silver-star-the-mission-that-never-was?Itemid=
Click on the PDF.
Yep. I believe it was historian Henry Sakaida who did all the legwork on that, but the bogosity of the Silver Star was suspected as long ago as the 1960s. Henry just proved it.
Still waiting for another USS England. After all, a promise is a promise.
Naming warships after homo’s and not hero’s. Chancres Aweigh !!!
BARRY’s motto has always been “Strength and Diversity.” It was generally not thought of (I only used as a line in my email sig because I always put the command motto in there so I don’t have to put an awful original quote).
If they wanted to get Diversity Points, they could at least give it to Diversities who Did Something: another USS Dorie Miller would be fine. USS HORACIO RIVERO would work, too-first Puerto Rican four-star (loses out first Hispanic four-star to one D. G. Farragut), but also had a role in developing the VT fuse and working on making radar-directed naval gunfire work, to critical effect in some of the later parts of the naval campaign for Guadalcanal.
But that’s not what Ray Mabus wanted.
Any takers for a pool on how long until there’s a push for a USS Barack Hussein Obama?
I foresee a vessel that despite the best efforts of command, navigation, steersmen and engineering, will always deviate from a True Heading, and turn her bow to face Mecca five times a day.
We could probably get a vessel from Kenya, and reflag it.
You’d think we’d name ships exclusively after MoH winners.
I would push for naming a vessel the John McCain, if the senior senator from Insanity would do us the courtesy of expiring.
We already have a vessel handy: Pueblo (AGER-2), still on the active ship roster, lies a-rusting in Pyongyang, and could be immediately renamed in absentia, and like its namesake, was made a POW during the Vietnam War, earned most of its glory while in captivity, and is largely obsolete and irrelevant.
There’s already one:
USS JOHN S. MCCAIN (DDG 56)
http://www.public.navy.mil/surfor/ddg56/Pages/default.aspx
Named after his father and grandfather, actually. But I’m told he has a good relationship with the ship as well.
IIRC his grandfather was someone big in the Pacific… Macarthur’s naval air guy, and a two star, or something like that? His father was four stars and CINCPAC.
That’s why I want Sen. McCrazy to have his own ship, and one that befits his status as wartime hero and peacetime rustbucket of embarrassment.
Also because of the convention that he’d have to be dead first, which I admit is an undeniable draw.