Preserving a piece of US Maritime History - invaluable

The USS Olympia is a cruiser that fought in the Spanish American War in 1898 and has been preserved in Philadelphia. She's a one of a kind ship, a national historic monument, and in danger. She needs approximately $10-15 million in repairs to keep her a viable museum for years to come. If you have the resources, or connections to those resources, please consider helping. (full disclosure - there is no financial benefit to me to ask the question - we need to save this ship for posterity). Please contact me at 612-599-1935 or bdskon@fedex.com if you have additional questions.

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Saturday, March 12, 2011

The Decline of U.S. Naval Power

http://disc.yourwebapps.com/discussion.cgi?disc=153363;article=24366;title=USS%20Yorktown%20Sailor%7EVeterans%20Forum%7E

"And yet the fleet has been made to wither even in time of war. We have the smallest navy in almost a century, declining in the past 50 years to 286 from 1,000 principal combatants. Apologists may cite typical postwar diminutions, but the ongoing 17% reduction from 1998 to the present applies to a navy that unlike its wartime predecessors was not previously built up. These are reductions upon reductions. Nor can there be comfort in the fact that modern ships are more capable, for so are the ships of potential opponents. And even if the capacity of a whole navy could be packed into a small number of super ships, they could be in only a limited number of places at a time, and the loss of just a few of them would be catastrophic."

Key section of the article - all this said - we have capabilities that no other Navy has:

Our DDG's individually are said to be the most powerful surface combantants ever deployed
Our 22 Aegis cruisers - you wouldn't want to meet in a fight
Our 11 CVN's - each are the 5th largest air force in the world, or so I'm told - with advanced weaponary
Our 53 fast attack submarines simply can't be found
Our 10 Big Deck Amphibs have capabilities no other countries have - do you want to face 6 or 7 really mean Marine Harrier pilots?

Wharf Rat

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