News Doris Miller: US Navy aircraft carrier to honour black sailor

[Notebook]

Fairly sure this a scene in the film "Tora, Tora, Tora"?

Didn't know its history till now.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51168798

 

[MaverickSawyer]

It's also the first supercarrier to honor an enlisted sailor.

Hopefully the Miller will be much more reliable than the Ford[ has been.

 

[Notebook]

Don't think the Royal Navy has a history of naming other than high-ranking officers.
Not even sure the RAF gets a mention yet, too young!

Other than adjectives, Splendid, Valiant, Dreadnought etc. fairly mundane.

Our last battleship was HMS Anson. Had to look that up, probably called HMS Anon..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Anson_(79)

No it wasn't it wasn't

HMS Vanguard was a British fast battleship built during the Second World War and commissioned after the end of the war. She was the biggest and fastest of the Royal Navy's battleships,[3] the last battleship to be launched in the world, and the only ship of her class.
The Royal Navy anticipated being outnumbered by the combined German and Japanese battleships in the early 1940s, and had therefore started building the Lion-class battleships. However the time-consuming construction of the triple-16-inch turrets for the Lion-class would delay their completion until 1943 at the earliest. The British had enough 15-inch (381 mm) guns and turrets in storage to allow one ship of a modified Lion-class design with four twin-15-inch turrets to be completed faster than the Lion-class vessels that had already been laid down.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Vanguard_(23)

Last ever, should have remembered that.

 

[Fabri91]

I mean, you brits kind of appear to know how to name things. Case in point: the Colossus-class aircraft carrier HMS Vengeance!

 

[Notebook]

Yes, we steal them from other nations and empires...
Nice touch calling a light-carrier colossus.

 

[Linguofreak]

It's also the first supercarrier to honor an enlisted sailor.

Hopefully the Miller will be much more reliable than the Ford[ has been.

Frankly, I wish the Navy would stop naming supercarriers after people. Just too much opportunity for graft and status seeking and brown nosing. But if they're gong to do it, dead enlisted men are preferable to living or recently dead politicians and admirals. Only problem is, if it's done for enlisted men, the politicians and admirals are going to think they deserve it too.

 

[Sunhillow]

Nice touch calling a light-carrier colossus.

... only to confuse the Russians! :rofl:

 

[Urwumpe]

Frankly, I wish the Navy would stop naming supercarriers after people. Just too much opportunity for graft and status seeking and brown nosing. But if they're gong to do it, dead enlisted men are preferable to living or recently dead politicians and admirals. Only problem is, if it's done for enlisted men, the politicians and admirals are going to think they deserve it too.

That is pretty much why the German navy stopped using the names of humans for their ships and used states, cities, constellations and animals (for fast attack ships) there.

The Lütjens class (formerly Charles F Adams class of the US Navy) was the last such ship, naming the three ships after:

Lütjens|Admiral of the Kriegsmarine, died with the Bismarck.
Mölders|Pilot of the Luftwaffe and Legion Condor, possibly involved in Guernica.
Rommel|Nazi general and self-declared desert fox.

Really a shame, that right after the first phase of denazification, former Nazi officers in NATO clothes had been permitted to celebrate their former comrades. This should never have happened in first place.



The career of Mölders still causes a lot of political trouble here, since not all Luftwaffe officers are accepting that their "idol" is now a Nazi again. Mostly because most literature about him is based on his Nazi era biographer, who after the war painted himself as one of many silently opposing the regime, including Mölders.



The British SIS helped this a lot by faking a letter of Mölders to a catholic priest, which was happily embraced by the catholic church at that time since it helped justifying being catholic and Nazi at the same time (not what the SIS intended). An earlier real letter to his real favorite priest sounded a lot different, describing war as one big adventure and thanking god for his chance to prove himself as soldier.

 

[Linguofreak]

That is pretty much why the German navy stopped using the names of humans for their ships and used states, cities, constellations and animals (for fast attack ships) there.

The Lütjens class (formerly Charles F Adams class of the US Navy) was the last such ship, naming the three ships after:

Lütjens|Admiral of the Kriegsmarine, died with the Bismarck.
Mölders|Pilot of the Luftwaffe and Legion Condor, possibly involved in Guernica.
Rommel|Nazi general and self-declared desert fox.

Really a shame, that right after the first phase of denazification, former Nazi officers in NATO clothes had been permitted to celebrate their former comrades. This should never have happened in first place.

Funny thing, when it comes to the "Myth of the Clean Wehrmacht", I tend not to object to the Wehrmacht trying to portray itself as a bunch of fine, morally upstanding normal folks like the rest of us, that just ended up between a rock and a hard place in a madman's regime (or, these days, other people trying to portray it that way). I say this not because I believe that the Wehrmacht was not complicit in Hitler's crimes, but because the Wehrmacht gives the rest of us a glimpse in the mirror, if we're willing to see it. We need to be able to see the Wehrmacht as a bunch of fine, morally upstanding normal folks, and, *simultaneously* as complicit in Hitler's crimes, so that we can see the potential that we ourselves could end up committing, or complicit in, similar crimes.

That's not to say that the Lütjens class should have been named as it was, just that the Wehrmacht gives us a good object lesson on human nature that we miss if we just put their evilness down to them being an uncommon breed of villian, rather than admitting that they were as "clean" as the rest of us, and putting their evil down to "clean as the rest of us" not being clean enough.

 

[Urwumpe]

That's not to say that the Lütjens class should have been named as it was, just that the Wehrmacht gives us a good object lesson on human nature that we miss if we just put their evilness down to them being an uncommon breed of villian, rather than admitting that they were as "clean" as the rest of us, and putting their evil down to "clean as the rest of us" not being clean enough.

Thats a good point - but also a good reason not to name them as role models. I think the key question is also: Did those people promote the Nazi ideology or did they just arrange themselves with it? Some really wanted it, down to the war crimes. They DID see others as less human as they are. They had sure not been alone. But that does not make them special enough to celebrate.



Yesterday was the anniversary of the Wannsee conference, where "slightly evil" people came together for mere 90 minutes and discussed what should be the best way to kill 11 million jews (out of the 30 million people that the Nazis considered waste of resources)



I doubt you can apply normal standards of human evilness to this. There is a way how a human mind can be twisted into this kind of madness. Their mindset declares themselves above humanity and at the same time makes them enemies to humanity and humanism. Down to the point in consequence that they must be hating their own humanity and feeling disgusted by it.


Sure this won't apply to all Wehrmacht soldiers or Germans. There must have been different degrees of how much they embraced this devastating philosophy of life.



But it does not change that the heroes of this era can't be heroes for humanity. They are not. They would have killed any of us. Some directly for being waste. Some less directly for waging their wars. Others by having to fit into a system that kills slowly kills you from inside. They wouldn't have fought for us alive, and we sure would not get a better result by being a bit like them.




It is sickening to read similar thoughts again in German media and see the same kind of evilness in parliament again. It never really died. And there are many who think they are chosen by destiny to be superior to the rest of mankind.

 

[Linguofreak]

They had sure not been alone. But that does not make them special enough to celebrate.

Celebrate, no. But acknowledging that they are like us and we are like them is critical.

Yesterday was the anniversary of the Wannsee conference, where "slightly evil" people came together for mere 90 minutes and discussed what should be the best way to kill 11 million jews (out of the 30 million people that the Nazis considered waste of resources)

Not "slightly evil". Thoroughly evil. But they were just like us and we are just like them.

I doubt you can apply normal standards of human evilness to this. There is a way how a human mind can be twisted into this kind of madness. Their mindset declares themselves above humanity and at the same time makes them enemies to humanity and humanism.

But the pull towards thinking oneself better than humanity is universal. It starts with thinking yourself better than some small group A. And pretty soon you realize that group B is uncomfortably like group A. And group C is worryingly like group B... And next thing you know, you've reached the end of the alphabet, and all of humanity, from A to Z is below you. Not everybody reaches the end of this road, but everybody sets out on the journey, and many make it quite far, and it is largely circumstance, not character, that dictates how far. But the antidote is to look hard at group A, and find yourself there.

But it does not change that the heroes of this era can't be heroes for humanity.

The point, though, is, neither can we.

and we sure would not get a better result by being a bit like them.

No, we wouldn't, but we must realize that we already are like them.

It is sickening to read similar thoughts again in German media and see the same kind of evilness in parliament again. It never really died. And there are many who think they are chosen by destiny to be superior to the rest of mankind.

It's not just Germany, and it was there long before Hitler and will be there long after we're dust.

 

[tl8]

Most of the RAN fleet are named after Cities and Towns (The landlocked ones being the best ones of all).

The exception at the moment is HMAS Choules who was the last WWI solider in Australia to pass away.

Oh, there is also an Oberon class submarine in Holbrook in regional NSW.

 

[Urwumpe]

Celebrate, no. But acknowledging that they are like us and we are like them is critical.

Not "slightly evil". Thoroughly evil. But they were just like us and we are just like them.

Now, what is the consequence of this? Do we tolerate it as inevitable, that some people will kill a few ten million people because of "human nature"?

Or do we put safeguards in place to stop this development before people die because we are humans? I mean, we are no primitive animals, that are forced to act by instinct until it kills them. We can adapt even faster than just by evolution. We can adapt by reason. We can teach. We can especially also teach by picking role models that highlight what we want to teach. Good examples, that show how to do it. And bad examples, of how to not do it.

 

[4throck]

Indeed education is the root of the problem.
Most prejudice comes from not knowing. What you don't know is by definition alien, different or "wrong".

For total lack of geographical knowledge you have flat earth; for lack of physics you have the moon hoax; for lack of anthropology/genetics you have racism...

 

[jgrillo2002]

About damn time. the man was a hero!