USS California (BB-44) was the second of two Tennessee-classbattleships built for the United States Navy between her keel laying in October 1916 and her commissioning in August 1921. The Tennessee class was part of the standard series of twelve battleships built in the 1910s and 1920s, and were developments of the preceding New Mexico class. They were armed with a battery of twelve 14-inch (356 mm) guns in four three-gun turrets. California served as the flagship of the Battle Fleet in the Pacific Ocean for the duration of her peacetime career. She spent the 1920s and 1930s participating in routine fleet training exercises, including the annual Fleet Problems, and cruises around the Americas and further abroad, such as a goodwill visit to Australia and New Zealand in 1925.
California was moored in Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 when the Japanese attacked the port, bringing the United States into World War II. The ship was moderately damaged by a pair of torpedoes and a bomb, but a fire disabled the ship’s electrical system, preventing the pumps from being used to keep the ship afloat. California slowly filled with water over the following three days and eventually sank. Her crew suffered heavy casualties in the attack and four men were awarded the Medal of Honor for their actions during the attack. She was raised in April 1942, repaired and heavily rebuilt, and returned to service in January 1944.
HMS Petard 1961- On completion in 1942 she was a ‘P’ class Destroyer with the number G56. From 1953 to 1955 she was converted into a Type 15 Frigate with the number F56 At some point, maybe early 1960s, she was apparently renumbered as F26. Broken up in 1967. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Petard_(G56)
In this photo provided by South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson, left, sails with South Korean Navy’s Aegis destroyer King Sejong the Great and Japan’s Maritime Self-Defense Force Aegis destroyer Kongou in the international waters of the southern coast of Korean peninsular during a recent joint drill in 2024. (South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff via AP)
SEOUL, South Korea — The United States, South Korea and Japan conducted perhaps their biggest-ever combined naval exercises in a show of strength against nuclear-armed North Korea, South Korea’s military said Wednesday. The three allies’ senior diplomats were to meet in Seoul to discuss the worsening standoff with Pyongyang.
The training in waters off South Korea’s Jeju island, which involved an American aircraft carrier, was aimed at sharpening the countries’ combined deterrence and response capabilities against North Korean nuclear, missile and underwater threats, and also training for preventing illicit maritime transports of weapons of mass destruction, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said. It didn’t specify whether the training reflected concerns about North Korea’s alleged arms transfers to Russia to help that country’s war in Ukraine.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has been on a provocative run of weapons testing and threats that raised regional tensions to their highest point in years.
On Monday at Pyongyang’s rubber-stamp parliament, Kim declared that North Korea would abandon its long-standing commitment to a peaceful unification with South Korea and ordered a rewriting of North’s constitution to eliminate the idea of a shared statehood between the war-divided countries. He said South Koreans were “top-class stooges” of America who were obsessed with confrontation, and repeated a threat that the North would annihilate the South with its nukes if provoked.
Kim’s speech came a day after the North conducted its first ballistic test of 2024, which state media described as a new solid-fuel, intermediate-range missile tipped with a hypersonic warhead, reflecting its push to advance its lineup of weapons targeting U.S. military bases in Guam and Japan.
In response to the North’s heightened testing activity, the United States and its Asian allies have been expanding their combined military exercises. Kim condemns the demonstrations as invasion rehearsals, and the drills increasingly feature major U.S. military assets, including aircraft carriers, long-range bombers and nuclear-capable submarines.
Kim has also been strengthening his regional footing by boosting the visibility of his ties with Russia and China — two neighbors that are also locked in confrontations with the United States — as he attempts to break out of isolation and join a united front against Washington.
North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui traveled to Moscow, where she met Tuesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin for talks on improving bilateral relations amid growing international concern about alleged arms cooperation between the countries.
The North’s official Korean Central News Agency said Choe in a separate meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had unspecified discussions on intensifying their countries’ “joint action over the regional and international issues including the situation in the Korean Peninsula.”
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the trilateral naval drills — a three-day program that concluded Wednesday — involved nine warships, including U.S. aircraft carrier Carl Vinson and Aegis destroyers from South Korea and Japan. The drills usually involve around five vessels. South Korea’s military did not immediately confirm media assessments that the exercise was the country’s largest trilateral naval drill.
In Seoul, South Korean nuclear envoy Kim Gunn met Wednesday with Japanese counterpart Hiroyuki Namazu ahead of a trilateral meeting planned for Thursday with U.S. President Joe Biden’s deputy special representative for North Korea, Jung Pak, to coordinate their response to the North. Kim and Namazu discussed the North Korean leader’s latest comments toward the South and the North’s recent military actions, including Sunday’s missile test and its recent artillery firings near a disputed sea boundary with the South, Seoul’s Foreign Ministry said.
“The two sides regretted North Korea’s aggressive rhetoric that misrepresents the cause of rising regional tensions and threatens war, and agreed that such actions will only strengthen trilateral security cooperation” with Washington, the South Korean ministry said in a statement.
The envoys also discussed Choe’s visit to Russia and vowed to coordinate a “stern and unified” international response to any illicit military cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang, the ministry said, including the alleged transfers of North Korean missiles to Russia.
RFA Resurgent (A280) was an armament support ship of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary. Built by Scotts of Greenock as Changchow, a cargo/passenger liner for the China Navigation Co. Made redundant by the Communist victory in 1949, Changchow and her sistership Chungking (later RFA Retainer) were chartered to the French « Messageries Maritimes », for the Marseilles-Sydney line, via Panama.[1] Purchased by the Admiralty and chartered out to British India until 1957. In 1956-1957, under the name Resurgent, she was again chartered to the « Messageries Maritimes », making trips to New Caledonia and Australia. After that, she was converted to an armament store issuing ship and entered RFA service.[1]
In 1975 she took part in the Joint Services Expedition to Danger Island (JSDI). Small, rocky, Resurgent Island, which had emerged after the naming of the Three Brothers in the 18th century, was named after the RFA Resurgent which supported the scuba diving scientific research expedition to the area.[2]
She served until 1979, sailing from Rosyth in tow for demolition in Spain on 5 May 1981.
JANUARY 17, 2024 6:36 PM – UPDATED: JANUARY 17, 2024 9:10 PM
Sailors assigned to the world’s largest aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) man the rails upon return from the shipÕs eight-month maiden deployment, Jan. 17, 2024. U.S. Navy Photo
Aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) pulled into Naval Station Norfolk on Wednesday after a deployment to the Mediterranean that included three extensions. The Navy’s newest in-service aircraft carrier left in May for a deployment that lasted more than eight months. It was the first worldwide deployment for Ford, the lead ship in the Navy’s new class of carriers.
Ford began its deployment operating in the North Sea, making a port call in Oslo, Norway before heading to the Mediterranean. The carrier had been operating in the Med for several months when it moved closer to Israel, in the Eastern Mediterranean following the October attacks in southern Israel.
“In total, the GRFCSG worked with 17 nations throughout its deployment during exercises Baltic Operations, Air Defender, Bomber Task Force Viking Trident, Neptune Strike, and Sage Wolverine,” the Navy said in a news release. “The strike group operated with Standing NATO Maritime Groups 1 and 2, conducted dual-carrier operations with USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69), and exercised with navies from France, Greece, Norway, Türkiye and the United Kingdom.”
The carrier originally deployed with Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Normandy (CG-60) and Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers USS McFaul (DDG-74), USS Ramage (DDG-61), and USS Thomas Hudner (DDG-116). Hudner and McFaul returned to their respective homeports of Naval Station Mayport in Florida and Norfolk Naval Station in Virginia earlier this month.
The Pentagon first extended Ford‘s deployment in mid-October, shortly after the Hamas attacks in southern Israel that have led to the ongoing conflict in the region. The Defense Department extended Ford two more times, as the U.S. Navy responded to ongoing drone and missile attacks on sea lanes in the Red Sea.
“Though extended, we were the right ship at the right time to answer the call, and our Sailors performed admirably,” Ford commanding officer Capt. Rick Burgess said in a statement. “Ford Sailors honored our namesake’s legacies of hard work, integrity, and courage.”
The third extension in December kept Ford out through the holiday season. The carrier was at sea for 239 days, according to the Navy.
“The Ford crew conducted 33,444 flight deck moves, 3,124 hangar bay aircraft moves, 2,883 aircraft elevator moves, 16,351 aircraft fueling evolutions, and transferred 8,850 pallets of cargo and mail,” the Navy said in the release. “The Gerald R. Ford culinary team prepared and served 3.1 million meals, which included approximately 48,000 dozen eggs, 24,000 gallons of milk, 131,000 hamburgers, 367,000 pounds of chicken, and Gerald R. Ford’s favorite, 79,000 chocolate chip cookies.”
The makeup of the Ford Carrier Strike Group featured the units and staff of Carrier Strike Group 12, Carrier Air Wing 8, and Destroyer Squadron (DESRON) 2.
Ford includes a host of new technologies aboard, including the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) and Advanced Arresting Gear (AAG), new systems for launching and recovering aircraft.
Now that the carrier has returned, it will undergo a sortie generation rate test to see if Ford is meeting the promise of increasing the SGR by 30 percent over the Nimitz-class of carriers, USNI News previously reported.
