I don’t talk much about The Day Job, because I like to keep the two separate. But every now and then, things just have to cross over.
I get to know a lot of interesting people through work, and they get to know a little about me. One person learned about my admiration and fascination with nearly all things naval, and remembered me recently.
This person has a very, very, very, very, very small part in working on the Navy’s next-generation destroyer project, known over the last few years as DD-21 (21st-century destroyer), DDX (experimental destroyer), and currently DDG-1000 (resuming the “old” numbering of destroyers, which had started over at 1 when they changed from DD to DDG (guided missile-armed destroyers), but skipping 998 and 999).
It seems that in the last name change, the Navy sent down word to “get rid” of the prior artistic renderings of the planned class leader, now legally named the USS Zumwalt after Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, the former Chief of Naval Operations who served with distinction in World War II and Viet Nam. They had made some very minor changes in the official portrait (adding in the hull number and making one of the guns firing), and that meant the prior versions were consigned to the trash heap.
Well, this acquaintance of mine knew that I’d be more appreciative of their print than the dumpster would be, so I now find myself in possession of a rather large copy of this picture. The full version measures about 18 inches by 24 inches, it’s mounted, covered with a protective laminate, and is more than suitable for framing.
Which I just might do.
And yes, I thanked my benefactor profusely.
It’s still just a target as we bottom gunners like to say!
…being a chick, I’m admiring the sunset. If you could just move that destroyer a little to the left…
Who would saddle a child with a name like “Elmo”? I even heard of some strange blogger who named his cat Elmo, but I can’t remember the guy’s name 🙂
They should have went with the “USS Elmo”.
And us Skimmers call you guys nothing but tuna cans with a bullseye on your ass.
Well except the Ohio Class… wouldn’t want to damage anything that would take out Irans Mullahs.
Jay:
Question? The shape would indicate stelth?
The shape does provide stealth by reducing the ship’s radar cross-section. The angles bounce the radar waves in different directions instead of reflecting radar waves straight back down the path of propagation to the source. Makes the ship harder to detect with radar, and when it is detected it looks smaller than it really is.
The DDG 51 class ships use the concept.
That’s no sunset, that’s a rosy-fingered dawn, Candy.
Excellent present, JT. I’ve had a few pieces of art given to me by grateful folks, but nothing that nice or historically interesting.
Is that a Monitor class?
Just had to read anything that said for Navy Geeks only.
Thanks for sharing and I am going to stay out of the whole bubblehead and skimmer conversation.
Regards,
Former QM3(SS) now CDR(SWO) converted to IP
aka Mike
The DDX class is being built with the Lorentz rail guns that are being developed.
Rounds that travel faster than 2 miles per second. WHEE!
Okay, I’ll be the dummy who asks:
What is a “rail gun”?
fatman:
a rail gun is a tube with electromagnets embedded in the sides. When it’s “fired,” it generates a magnetic field that pushes the projectile out the open end of the tube with tremendous speed. Advantages: no explosive risk, no moving parts, no recoil. Disadvantages: huge energy cost, big honking magnetic fields that can mess up the rest of your vessel.
Since they don’t use any kind of explosive propellant, they’re ideal for use in space, too.
J.
Ok I can see it coming…next SciFi movie:
First operational test of a rail gun on a DD(X) sets up super duper magnetic field…then ship disappears, goes back in time.
Ship and crew end up in 1916, North Atlantic, just in time for the sinking of the Lusitania.
Kirk Douglas, skipper, agonizes whether to shoot the German U-Boats with his super duper rail gun.
Martin Sheen, President, visiting the vessel for the operational firing exercise, agonizes over whether having such a super duper weapon is “right”, and wonders whether the world will hate us even more for having it, when they don’t…and lambasts Kirk Douglas and the rest of the Navy guys for being so “militaristic”.
Then Richard Hoagland pops up in the middle of the action and claims that rail guns are really secret weapons imported from Cydonia, and that when they fire at 33 degrees, it’s an invitation for superior Martian beings to wipe out humanity.
When Kirk Douglas decides to screw up history and sink the b*stards, super duper magnetic field kicks them back to 2006.
Movie ends with Richard Hoagland and Martin Sheen stranded on unknown Atlantic island in 1916.
(with extreme apologies to “The Final Countdown”, “The Philadelphia Experiment”, “The West Wing”, and The Enterprise Mission’s interesting website…and notice I didn’t even mention David Icke or Reptilians at all, because that would give away the sequel. Long live Hollywood.)
Thank you, Jay Tea.
Wanderlust, I hear a nice quiet room, a soft bed and cold compresses are good for that. And if it really gets bad, well…there’s always Anne Heche and Joan Chen.;)
Jay Tea, what you’ve just described is a Coil Gun… a rail gun is what you have when you have two condcutive rails and an armature/projectile that is driven by the Lorentz forces that occur when you pass current through the projectile.
http://www.railgun.org/
Why didn’t they just yield to the inevitable and name it the Merrimac…?
I have something better than a poster of a DDG-1000 which can’t even perform its primary mission to provide Naval Gun Fire to support troops.
http://www.silver-star.net/dd/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=11
This is on display in DC at the Rayburn Building in the House Armed Services Committee Office.
Enjoy the pics of a real surface combatant that kicks A$$!