USS Zumwalt

I was privileged to know Adm. Zumwalt and went to boat school with his son back in 1969. He is turning over in his grave because of this fiasco. It is a great concept, but was built ahead of it's time. He was against wasteful spending, and they don't even have enough ammo for the guns on this ship.

 

Yes. He died in 1988 from cancers linked to Agent Orange, which Adm Zumwalt ordered sprayed to clear the canal banks. ZIII's son also had birth defects that were related to exposure.
I wasn't on ZIII's boat incountry, but did go thru Swift boat school with him. I was on a different boat in a different division in the Mekong Delta for my year, while he was only down south for about half his time.
A lot of the guy's in our reunion assoc. have had a lot of health complications from exposure. We drank, coooked, swimmed and bathed in the river water, and many have died an early death. Thankfully, i have only had minor complications, type II diabetes and peripheral neuropathy in my right leg.

 

God, are you even allowed to smoke while on duty in the service anymore?

 

I had the pleasure of working on this ship at Bath Iron Works before I went back to driving. We knew there were going to be problems with it, there always are with the first of anything. Hopefully DDG-1001 & DDG-1002 will have at least some of the bugs fixed.

 

That ship is a brick. It's a pretty ship with the old dreadnought era Bow going back to the 20's but really, with all that electronic stuff, stability in waves is the least of it's worries, if it is in waves steep and deep enough to need stablility from that bow cut, it is likely not going to be much of a defense for itself in such a storm.

These ships are underwhelming in fighting potential. The newer Russian Warships are stuffed with weapons fore and aft in the hundreds of potential missiles. A VLS box containing 50 is not enough. You need to bring a thousand missiles with you and have armor that will stop or mitigate the Kaliber Missiles used today or even the Sunburn. Aluminum and Composite fiber is not going to get the job done, in fact it will burn.

Having a ship that will do many small things with a flat deck in half of it means it's just a platform. Not a fearsome warship capable of combat more than a hour. I think there are two 155's aboard and those are good for 20 miles. You are not going to see one of these survive long enough to be any good to the Marines going ashore. And neither are the Iowas BB's (Battleships, we own 4...) are any good, the latest Kalibers can penetrate 20 feet of armor steel.

What to do then? Well, if you consider the latest in Main Battle Tank Armoring that has compounds, combined layers and active defense, a few thousand tons of the same on a warship can theoratically do the same work. That is where I am at. Build a 30,000 ton ship to fight, 10K of that in Armor. It will be a very hard target. And maybe something with a few hundred missiles and a couple dozen 8 inchers or equivilant will be a good combatant.