End of the Road for the RN

[Lonestar]

French

I'm arguing with DD on AIM right now. He is informing me that state intervention has "infantized" the French people and he hasn't been able to explain why this is massively different than, oh, what the French people do every decade or so since the storming of the Bastille.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

and despite of this the French have larger economy than the British, best health service in the world, best army in Europe, work 35 hours a week, virtually cannot get fired, and less unemployment than US and UK currently (but OK this is mostly the same all the time) ... French

[Provost Harrison]

There's an article in the latest Economist that says the Brits are now interested in cooperating closely with the French armed forces--splitting duties and such, so each country can get by with a smaller, cheaper force.

(cue jokes about the French military)

Which is fine providing they don't bleeding well go on strike

[Lonestar]

Which is fine providing they don't bleeding well go on strike

The French Army isn't really the part of the country that goes on strike. If anything the RN is the one with histories of going on strike, even causing the creation of the term

[Al B. Sure!]

Wow the British Navy had mutinied a lot in history. Some of the French Army did in 1917 which had to be a real ****ty time for a mutiny

I'm pretty sure the US military has never had a mutiny in it's history, although the US did have traitors like Benedict Arnold and the Confederacy.

[MikeH]

Most of the Royal Navy ones were before the US even existed as a country though.

15 seconds on google finds me these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutiny#Famous_mutinies

The USS Sharon, a New England whaler, was subject to multiple mass desertions, mutinies, and the murder and dismemberment of a cruel (and from the record, sociopathic) captain by four Polynesians who had been pressed into service on the Sharon.

The brig USS Somers had a mutiny plotted onboard on her first voyage. Three men were accused of conspiring to commit mutiny, and were hanged.

Port Chicago mutiny on August 9, 1944, three weeks after the Port Chicago disaster, 258 out of the 320 African-American sailors in the ordnance battalion refused to load any ammunition.[4]

http://www.democracynow.org/2007/12/21/us_soldiers_stage_mutiny_refuse_orders

Also "fraggings" might not technically be classed as mutiny but apparently were common in Vietnam

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragging

[Al B. Sure!]

I don't see how the USS Sharon is included. That's a whaler, not a military vessel, and it had Polynesians pressed into service, not Americans.

[MikeH]

I just copied and pasted some US looking mutinies.

But you are presumably including Royal Naval ships with sailors pressed into service from other nations.

A US military mutiny as recent as 2007 though.

Our military personnel >>>> US military personnel.

[ColdPhoenix]

UK defense spending is going to end up being below 2% of the GDP...below NATO norms. IMO this makes our relationship with the UK less of a "Special Relationship" and more of a "dependency relationship". Maybe the UK should step down from the Big-boys table at the UN Security Council and we can stick India or Japan there.

In 2009 the UK was 3rd in the world in military spending. The cuts will be an 8% reduction. Based on 2009 figures that would drop them to 4th place (and France would just nudge into 3rd). It's still more than Russia, a lot more than Japan and almost twice India's spending. So STFU mofo!!!

[MikeH]

[Al B. Sure!]

I just copied and pasted some US looking mutinies.

But you are presumably including Royal Naval ships with sailors pressed into service from other nations.

A US military mutiny as recent as 2007 though.

Our military personnel >>>> US military personnel.

Well I don't know how to characterize this one:

We speak with a reporter from the Army Times who gives an inside account of how an army unit committed mutiny and refused to carry out orders in Iraq. After an IED attack killed five more members of Charlie 1-26, members of 2nd Platoon gathered for a meeting and determined they could no longer function professionally. Several platoon members were afraid their anger could set loose a massacre.

[MikeH]

No self control. Sums it up.

[Lonestar]

Sorry, no mutinies on US Naval Ships dawg:

Dear Cecil:

Last weekend I watched the classic 1954 film The Caine Mutiny, which sparked the question: Have there been mutinies aboard U.S. naval vessels, and if so, what were the outcomes?

— Jeff P., via e-mail

The Caine Mutiny opens with the words, "There has never been a mutiny in a ship of the United States Navy." This may be narrowly true - so far as I can determine, nobody has ever been formally charged with committing mutiny aboard a commissioned U.S. naval vessel. But let's not bandy words. There have been mutinies in the U.S. Navy, including one conspiracy aboard a ship at sea; U.S. Navy personnel have been formally charged with mutiny and punished for it; and a few poor sods hanged. We've just never had a case where all these things applied at the same time. Here's how it all sorts out:

(1) Navy ship but no formal charges. The ship was the brig Somers, discussed in this space before. (See The Straight Dope: 060630.) In 1842 the Somers set sail on a training mission in the Atlantic with a large number of apprentice seamen. During the voyage the ship's officers heard reports of an impending mutiny, with 18-year-old midshipman Philip Spencer pegged by an informant as the ringleader. With only ten officers to control more than 100 men, the ship's captain, Commander Alexander Mackenzie, quickly arrested Spencer and two alleged coconspirators. The three were accused of plotting to seize the vessel, throw loyal seamen overboard, and turn the Somers into a pirate ship. No formal court-martial was held; rather the assembled officers decided the men were guilty and on December 1 Mackenzie had all three hanged. An inquiry once the Somers returned to U.S. waters determined that Mackenzie had acted properly, but fearing he might be brought up on criminal charges in a civilian court (Spencer's father was secretary of war), the captain requested and was granted a full court-martial. Though widely criticized for acting precipitously, Mackenzie was cleared on all counts after a two-month trial.

(2) Formal charges but not navy ship. This mutiny took place at the Port Chicago/Mare Island naval complex northeast of San Francisco during World War Two. Port Chicago was a major ammunition depot for the Pacific fleet, where ships were loaded hastily with minimal regard for safety, perhaps because most menial labor was done by black sailors commanded by white officers. On July 17, 1944, the merchant ship E.A. Bryan was being loaded with 4,600 tons of explosives when it blew up, killing all 320 men on duty and injuring 390 others. When the surviving workers were told to resume loading ammunition at nearby Mare Island less than a month later, 258 refused. The navy hit 208 of the men with bad-conduct discharges and court-martialed the rest for mutiny. All 50 received lengthy prison terms, but their sentences were commuted shortly after war's end.

(3) Formal charges, ship at sea carrying U.S. military cargo, but not navy. In March 1970 during the Vietnam war, two sailors used smuggled guns to seize the merchant ship Columbia Eagle, en route to a U.S. Air Force base in Thailand with a cargo of napalm bombs. Most of the crew was tricked into leaving the ship for a lifeboat drill, and the mutineers steamed for Cambodia, where the government granted them asylum as anti-war revolutionaries. Unfortunately for the plotters, two days later the regime was overthrown and they were held as prisoners. One was ultimately returned to the U.S. and convicted of mutiny and other charges; the other escaped from custody in Cambodia and was never found.

(4) Navy ships but only near-mutinies. Famous incidents during the Vietnam war include the race-driven clashes on the carriers Kitty Hawk and Constellation in 1972. But the events that came closest to replicating The Caine Mutiny took place aboard the Vance, an aging destroyer escort sent to Vietnam in December 1965 for patrol duty. The captain, one Marcus Aurelius Arnheiter, was alleged by his crew to have been a Queeglike character who inaugurated a program of inspections, etiquette lectures, and mandatory religious services led by himself, kept a stash of alcohol on board, and at one point ordered an officer to act like a "pompom girl." After Arnheiter supposedly told subordinates to falsify reports, shelled a Buddhist pagoda and almost grounded the ship in the process, and shouted hysterically at ricochets from his ship's own gun, junior officers got word to HQ and the captain was relieved of command after just 14 weeks. He accused his underlings of mutiny, but a naval hearing upheld his removal and no mutiny charges were filed.

So we've got navy ships, mutinies, charges, and punishment, just not all at once. Still, you won't catch me knocking The Caine Mutiny. Sure, some prefer Caddyshack. But to me there's no finer movie moment than when Lieutenant Maryk grabs a Bible (my books weren't available) and declares, "That's the straight dope!"

RN has had shipboard mutinies, and of course the RN is the point of discussion here.


FYI the Nips will shortly have better power projection capability than the UK, which is my point about why they would be a better choice than the UK on the security council. That the Brits are in the process of additionally gutting their deterrent whilst the Indians are building a credible one is a strike against the "well they have nukes so they should be on the security council".

If a decade down the line the RN has 3 SSBNs and the Indian Navy has 4 why should the UK be allowed a permanent seat? If the UK can't be arsed to fund their global aspirations why should they be trusted to have veto power?

[MikeH]

It seems like when you have a mutiny you fudge the definition so it doesn't technically count. You'll note our definition of mutiny is much easier to fall foul of and includes:

(c) to impede the performance of any duty or service in Her Majesty’s forces or in any forces co-operating therewith or in any part of any of the said forces.

[MikeH]

If a decade down the line the RN has 3 SSBNs and the Indian Navy has 4 why should the UK be allowed a permanent seat? If the UK can't be arsed to fund their global aspirations why should they be trusted to have veto power?

How stupid are you? I explained this. They can't remove us without removing our veto and they can't remove our veto if we vote against them doing so. Doesn't matter if we deserve it or not. But we'd still be the 4th biggest military by spending, bigger than Russia so WHATEVER.

And as I already clarified at least once, I don't have any opposition to other members joining permanent security council if they warrant it.

So what exactly are you arguing against?