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Project Sanguine to Resume;
Site Still not Determined
(Ocean Science News, 30 August 1974)
The Navy is assured of enough research and development funding in fiscal year 1975 to resume work on the extra- low frequency system for communicating with ballistic missile submarines. The Navy so far has spent $74.9 million on Sanguine and figures it will need another $45 million in research and development before the underground system of grids and antennas can be built, starting around 1977. Meanwhile, after taking considerable flak from environmentalists, the Navy has abandoned plans to situate Sanguine in Wisconsin, Michigan, or Texas. Instead, Sanguine probably will be built on federally owned lands in the West. The Navy is looking at three sites in Utah, one each in Idaho and Montana, and even at Nellis Air Force Base, outside Las Vegas. The inside betting is that one of the Utah sites will be selected.
The next step for the Navy will be to choose a contractor to devise the receiver and trailing antenna systems that will be installed in the Polaris, Poseidon, and—later on—Trident ballistic missile (FBM) submarines. Competitors are TRW Systems, RCA, and Syl- vania. The winner probably will be chosen in November for a $10 million development contract to last about two and a half years. Each of the three firms has been competing under a $3 million preliminary development contract for the past year. Sanguine’s signals are expected to penetrate at least 60 feet beneath the surface. Under the present
systems of communicating with FBM subs via satellite, the fbm subs must float antennas to the surface, thus rendering themselves vulnerable to detection and strikes.
Cruise Missile Sub Delayed
(DMS Intelligence, 16 August 1974)
The Navy still wants a nuclear- powered, cruise missile-firing strategic and tactical submarine in the fleet, but more pressing and expensive shipbuilding programs have forced it to the back burner. Funded at more than $1 million through fiscal year 1972 for preliminary design, the SSGN-X (nuclear-powered cruise missile submarine-experimental) has not been funded for the last three fiscal years.
The tactical cruise missile submarine currently being considered by the Navy would have the capability to attack major surface and subsurface units at extended ranges, well outside the area for effective antisubmarine warfare countermeasures. The strategic version would have a capability to attack land- based targets 1,400 miles from the launching platform. As currently envisioned, the SSGN-X would carry an arsenal of both tactical and strategic cruise missiles.
The Navy is still studying the possibility of proceeding with SSGN-X. The final decision, possibly to be made during the current fiscal year, will be based on the Navy’s requirements over the next 30 years, and will be subject to Department of Defense and congressional review and approval. In short,
the Navy is interested in this submarine, but it does not have enough priority to compete with other high-cost programs on the Navy want list at this time.
Cyprus War Results in Protest Of U. S. Ship Loan to Turkey
(The New York Times [Associated Press], 29 August 1974)
Concern over Turkish military intervention in Cyprus transformed the routine loan yesterday of an old U. S. amphibious landing ship to Turkey into a controversial move assailed by citizens and members of Congress.
Transfer ceremonies at Seattle, Washington were picketed by 75 members of Citizens for Cyprus. The protesters carried signs saying "Give American Boats
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status, but pressure is being mounted by both the Navy and the Air Force, who would be the principal users of the proposed multi-million dollar base that would be built there. Studies have already been made of the site and at least one congressional committee has visited the islands.
for Relief, Not Grief” and "Our Taxes at Work: Helping Turks Kill Innocent People.”
Senator Henry M. Jackson, Democrat of Washington, sent a telegram to President Ford urging that "all further military and economic assistance to Turkey be held in abeyance until there has been a proper withdrawal of Turkish forces from Cyprus.”
The ship involved is the USS Westchester County (LST-H67), a 384-foot, 2,590-ton ship capable of carrying a crew of 115 and 395 troops. The 20-year-old vessel had been decommissioned and was moored at Bremerton, across Puget Sound from Seattle.
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The ship is being renamed the Serdar. She will be overhauled by a commercial shipyard at Turkish expense, a Navy spokesman said.
Coeds Keep Plebes in Academy
{The New York Times [United Press International], 9 August 1974)
Officials of the Merchant Marine Academy, the only service academy accepting women, believed the coed atmosphere may be a factor causing fewer students to drop out.
Commander Emmanuel L. Jenkins, director of admissions for the academy at Kings Point, Long Island, told a House Armed Services subcommittee yesterday that on 16 July the school enrolled 15 women or 4% of its incoming class. It was the first year the academy accepted women. At the end of the two-week orientation program, only 17 plebes dropped out, of whom one was a woman, he said. By comparison, 44 men dropped out after last year’s orientation.
New Base Possible in Marianas
(DAIS Intelligence, 16 August 1974)
The possibility exists that there will be requests in the fiscal year 1976 budget not only for military construction at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, but for a planned new facility in the Marianas Islands at Tinian. The Marianas, an island chain some 5,000 miles from the United States, are administered by this country as a trusteeship under the United Nations. The hope is that this group of islands would become a commonwealth, thus becoming the first permanent addition for the United States since 1917. Congress has not yet been asked to authorize the commonwealth
Coast Guard Warns of Hijacking
(U. S. Coast Guard news release, 28 August 1974)
The Coast Guard today warned that, before leaving port, the operator of a vessel should insist on positive identification of all crew members and passengers. A copy of the crew list, along with a voyage plan, should be given to a trusted friend or relative with instructions to notify the Coast Guard if the vessel does not arrive in a reasonable time.
The growing number of yachts that are unaccounted for in southern or western waters over the past three years has become a matter of concern. More than 30 yachts have been reported as missing to the Coast Guard during that period. Three of these disappearances have been located and documented as hijacking. A fourth vessel was located and evaluated as a probable hijacking but the vessel was under foreign jurisdiction and, therefore, not subject to Coast Guard investigation. Reasons for the disappearances of the other vessels are unknown.
Officials said that two of the known cases of hijacking were related to drug activities:
► In the Caribbean, the 40-foot yacht lmamou departed from Colombia with two Americans, including the owner, and two foreign crewmen aboard. Eight months later the vessel was located at Pointe-a-Pitre, Guadeloupe without the Americans aboard. Authorities are holding two French-born men with known drug involvement for possible piracy and unlawful possession of the vessel. They claimed the Americans "gave” them the yacht.
► The yacht Kamalii was hijacked at gunpoint from her berth in Honolulu and put to sea. About 140 miles southwest of Hawaii, the three-man crew was put adrift on a raft without food or water. By chance, the raft was spotted
Notebook 125
later that day by an Italian freighter which had diverted to Hawaii for repairs. After the castaways told of the hijacking, the Coast Guard was notified. The craft was intercepted by a Coast Guard cutter, and the three American hijackers were arrested.
You Can’t Keep Good Pot Down
(The New York Times [United Press International], 29 August 1974)
For the second time in three days, the Coast Guard stopped a shipment of marijuana on the high seas. Three persons who leaped into the water after setting their boat afire were arrested.
The cutter Diligence (WMEC-616) ordered the 45-foot yacht Tarns to move to the lee side of Haiti for boarding yesterday afternoon, the Coast Guard reported. Instead, the three persons onboard the boat set it afire and leaped over the side, a spokesman said.
The Coast Guard said the Tarns exploded and sank, and 86 bales of compacted marijuana floated to the surface.
Only Soviets Can Afford Liners
(Paul Wohl in The Christian Science Monitor, 29 August 1974)
Soviet Ambassador Stephan V. Cher- vonenko has approached the French government with the proposal to buy the France, proud flagship of the French steamship line, which Paris desperately had tried to keep in service.
Rising fuel costs and a heavy operating deficit caused the French Line to announce earlier this summer that the ship would bow out of regular service with two cruises this October.
One after another the West’s big passenger liners have had to be laid up. Many of them have been bought by the Soviet Union, the only country which can afford to operate these ships in liner service or on cruises.
The reason is that Soviet operating costs are low. Crews are paid in non- transferable rubles. Fuel does not have to be imported. Food and almost all other materials are available in the U.S.S.R. at constant prices. (Inflation affects only the black market.)
The Soviet passenger fleet today holds third place in the world in terms of accommodations. Last year it serviced 176 regular lines with a total length of 180,000 miles, linking more than 80 ports and carrying over 45 million passengers (largely between Communist bloc countries).
The big passenger liners which now ply between North America and Leningrad under the Soviet flag or as cruise ships from New York into the Caribbean originally were built to Navy specifications as troop carriers in case of war. In an emergency the Soviet Navy expects to be able to protect them with its swarm of missile-carrying speedboats, submarine chasers, and attack submarines.
PBYs Make Civilian Comeback
(John D. Moorhead in The Christian Science Monitor, 29 August 1974)
Its gawky, familiar lines were known from Midway Island to Manila Bay to the English Channel in World War II.
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Rumbling over the Pacific and the Atlantic at a mere 120 mph., it delivered bombs, or troops, or mail, or freight, or torpedoes and kept on doing it until the war was done.
Now the venerable Catalina seaplane— the old PBY—with its bubble-flanked body and awning-like wings, has a new admirer.
Keith Larkin, a former Air Force pilot and California entrepreneur, has two reconditioned PBY-5s which he wants to use in a passenger and cargo service reaching some of the remotest parts of the world.
His plans envisage one of the cumbersome-looking aircraft swooping down onto an isolated lake in British Columbia with a load of hunters and fishermen or scouring thousands of miles of ocean with a team of experts hunting for undersea oil.
Both of Larkin’s aircraft are amphibians, which can operate either from sea or land. Both are completely refurbished mechanically, he says. "Outside they look like PBYs, but inside they are very similar to DC-3 airliners, with all the necessary modern equipment.”
He found his passenger-carrying PBY, with seats for 28, corroding at the end of a runway on St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. A team of five men spent four months getting it into flying condition before bringing it back to California. Then they spent another four months completing the rework job.
The other aircraft, which Larkin plans
to modify for special purposes such as oil exploration, was purchased from the Danish Air Force. He flew this and another PBY to the U. S. from Denmark across the North Atlantic, over the Greenland ice cap and Hudson Bay on the way back to California.
He kept only one of the Danish PBYs, selling the other to the Confederate Air Force, a private group of enthusiasts based at Harlingen, Texas, which owns and operates a fleet of old warplanes.
Law of Sea Conference Ends
(The New York Times [Reuters], 30 August 1974)
The third U.N. Law of the Sea Conference, billed as one of the most vital debates in history, ended yesterday at Caracas, Venezuela with little to show beyond an agreement to meet again in Geneva next March.
Optimists had expected the 10-week conference to produce at least the framework of a new world treaty to deal with ocean pollution, fishing disputes, navigation rights, and the ownership and sharing of oil, gas and mineral resources in coastal waters.
Dozens of the 3,000 delegates from nearly 150 nations and observer groups had already left before their national flags were lowered for the last time in the sunlit court of the towering high- rise conference complex here.
Many who were new to the compli
cated issues bearing on laws to control exploitation of the seas have said in private that compromise on the main confrontation between rich and poor nations can only be achieved at the ministerial level.
Delegation leaders say that divergent views on many questions have been narrowed down in group discussions outside the open conference debate.
The goal of the conference was a treaty replacing the centuries-old concept of "freedom of the seas.” The projected treaty would safeguard for future generations the once-rich fishing grounds now worked to near-exhaustion and threatened by pollution.
The envisioned treaty was also expected to guard the mineral resources against speculators and to guarantee an equitable distribution of seabed wealth.
But many were certain from the start that there was little chance of a consensus on a treaty framework at this gathering, the biggest international conference ever held.
John R. Stevenson, leading the United States delegation, said 28 August that the political will to negotiate was missing, mainly because of a general conviction that there would have to be further sessions.
Now hopes are pinned on govern- ment-to-government contact and negotiations by working groups before the conference resumes in Geneva.
Nuclear A1 utsu Goes to Sea
(The Washington Post, 26 August 1974)
Japan’s first nuclear-powered vessel, the Mutsu, sailed out of the northern port of Mutsu early today for a long- delayed test run after strong winds and an armada of 259 fishing boats had prevented her departure for 16 hours.
Officials said the Mutsu left in heavy winds and rain for three weeks of test runs.
Fishermen blockaded Mutsu Bay yesterday, preventing the ship’s leaving port. They fear that the 8,214-ton nuclear vessel will contaminate their fishing grounds.
The bad weather, caused by a typhoon approaching Japan, forced the fishermen to abandon their protest, which several coast guard patrol boats
ww 11 sc
Notebook
127
had earlier tried unsuccessfully to break up. The nuclear-powered vessel, completed two years ago for nonmilitary use, has been idle at the port of Mutsu because of opposition from the fishermen.
Navy to Concentrate Mothballed Reserve Ships at Three Sites
{Naval Affairs, August 1974)
In yet another closure, the Inactive ship Maintenance Facility in Orange, Texas, will close by 30 June 1976. The facility, established at the close of World War II, performs storage, maintenance, reactivation, and disposal functions for the Navy’s inactive fleet. Future inactivated ships will be berthed at Puget Sound and San Diego on the West Coast and at Philadelphia on the East Coast. The Navy’s policy of inactivating ships in their homeports and the reduced number of combatant hulls at Orange, as well as the high disposal rate of inactive ships, will eliminate all combatant hulls from Orange by the end of fiscal year 1976.
Changes in Status of Ships
Compiled by
Commander J. B. Finkelstein, U. S. Navy 1-31 August 1974
Ship Commissioned:
17 Aug 1974 USS Parche (SSN-683)
Ship Decommissioned:
8 Aug 1974 USS Columbus (CG-12)
Ship Transferred to Military Sealift Command:
30 Aug 1974 USS Ute (ATF-76)
Ships Transferred to Naval Reserve Force:
1 Aug 1974 USS Engage (MSO-433)
USS Fortify (MSO-446)
Pass-Down-The-Line-Notes
and Shore Establishments
USS Impervious (MSO-449) USS Inflict (MSO-456)
Facilities Disestablished:
1 Aug 1974 Naval Air Station, Imperial Beach, Calif.
Naval Hospital, Pensacola, Fla. (Consolidated with Naval Aerospace Regional Medical Center, Pensacola, Fla.)
16 Aug 1974 Naval Academy Preparatory School, Bainbridge, Md.
For those with memories of "China Station” service, the Yangtze River Patrol Association was founded in San Diego last spring. Eligible for membership are former Yangtze gunboaters— both officer and enlisted—and those in "outside ships”—cruisers, destroyers,
minesweepers, and others which beefed up the patrol in times of trouble. Contributions are welcomed for the association’s newsletter. For details on the association and newsletter, contact R. Adm. C. R. Coffin, U. S. Navy (Ret.), 566 B Avenue, Coronado, Calif. 92118.
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