28-02-2025, 08:46 PM
Very interesting. That jogged some memories from my time in the US Navy back in the early-mid 90's that for some reason, I've never gone back to truly figure out what was actually going on, exposing a hole in my general knowledge of that region. So thanks for bringing this up, it spurred me to go do some quick brushing up.
I was a parachute rigger for an S-3 squadron attached to the aircraft carrier USS America on a Med cruise 93/94. Still pre internet, was only 27 so only interested in doing my job well, and having a good time, I didn't know shit and didn't even care.
In hindsight now there was not just one, but two pretty sizeable events that happened on that cruise - the one I already knew was just before we were set to hit a port of call in Rhodes, Greece, the now infamous "Blackhawk Down" event happened in Mogadishu, Somalia. All port visits were immediately cancelled and we set sail on the double through the Suez Canal into the Indian Ocean, and spent 40 straight days steaming up and down the coast giving support to all sorts of military personnel ashore. IIRC there were quite a few SEALS ashore doing what SEALS do (you didn't ask), and I specifically recall how when they first came aboard for some R&R they always looked exhausted, and maybe a bit shell shocked. Who knows what they were doing/seeing.
But the other event, which I've never paid much mind about until now, was why we spent so much time in the Adriatic Sea, and hit Triesta, Italy twice for port of calls. The carrier group was part of both "Operation Deny Flight" - supporting a no fly zone over Bosnia, and "Operation Sharp Guard" - enforcing a blockade in the Adriatic.
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/...flight.htm
https://web.stanford.edu/group/tomzgroup...-a-IEM.pdf
Thinking back again, I wasn't the only one who basically knew nothing about events there on the ground. Even the pilots knew nothing. They knew the official NATO party line, and I can't recall a single person questioning anything, ever. I never talked to one person who didn't know that we were the good guys, there to make sure the bad guys didn't do bad guy type things.
Talk about being in the belly of the beast, I was part of the empire's police force, his muscle. And of course something else I didn't know then, was that we were right at the beginning of the now rapidly fading uni-polar moment. I was so excited, so proud to be an American, to be living on an aircraft carrier as the center piece of a strike group that instilled fear in despots around the world. Sometimes when we were underway full speed somewhere in the middle of some ocean, and flight ops weren't happening, I'd stand at the bow similar to that scene in "Titanic", and just be taken away by the sheer magnitude of where I was standing. The raw, unparalleled force behind it.
Now I know that we weren't the good guys, we were the bad guys. Not that we were bad people, we just simply knew not what we did. Problem is judging from the few ship and squadron chat groups I'm in, most of them STILL don't know. 30+ years on now, and they still joke and mock events like the over turning of Libya for example. Oh those were the days ha ha!...
I was a parachute rigger for an S-3 squadron attached to the aircraft carrier USS America on a Med cruise 93/94. Still pre internet, was only 27 so only interested in doing my job well, and having a good time, I didn't know shit and didn't even care.
In hindsight now there was not just one, but two pretty sizeable events that happened on that cruise - the one I already knew was just before we were set to hit a port of call in Rhodes, Greece, the now infamous "Blackhawk Down" event happened in Mogadishu, Somalia. All port visits were immediately cancelled and we set sail on the double through the Suez Canal into the Indian Ocean, and spent 40 straight days steaming up and down the coast giving support to all sorts of military personnel ashore. IIRC there were quite a few SEALS ashore doing what SEALS do (you didn't ask), and I specifically recall how when they first came aboard for some R&R they always looked exhausted, and maybe a bit shell shocked. Who knows what they were doing/seeing.
But the other event, which I've never paid much mind about until now, was why we spent so much time in the Adriatic Sea, and hit Triesta, Italy twice for port of calls. The carrier group was part of both "Operation Deny Flight" - supporting a no fly zone over Bosnia, and "Operation Sharp Guard" - enforcing a blockade in the Adriatic.
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/...flight.htm
https://web.stanford.edu/group/tomzgroup...-a-IEM.pdf
Thinking back again, I wasn't the only one who basically knew nothing about events there on the ground. Even the pilots knew nothing. They knew the official NATO party line, and I can't recall a single person questioning anything, ever. I never talked to one person who didn't know that we were the good guys, there to make sure the bad guys didn't do bad guy type things.
Talk about being in the belly of the beast, I was part of the empire's police force, his muscle. And of course something else I didn't know then, was that we were right at the beginning of the now rapidly fading uni-polar moment. I was so excited, so proud to be an American, to be living on an aircraft carrier as the center piece of a strike group that instilled fear in despots around the world. Sometimes when we were underway full speed somewhere in the middle of some ocean, and flight ops weren't happening, I'd stand at the bow similar to that scene in "Titanic", and just be taken away by the sheer magnitude of where I was standing. The raw, unparalleled force behind it.
Now I know that we weren't the good guys, we were the bad guys. Not that we were bad people, we just simply knew not what we did. Problem is judging from the few ship and squadron chat groups I'm in, most of them STILL don't know. 30+ years on now, and they still joke and mock events like the over turning of Libya for example. Oh those were the days ha ha!...
"FOLLOW THE EVIDENCE, WHEREVER IT LEADS" SOCRATES