Quote:
Originally Posted by Olefin
oh and why wasnt Tarawa the command ship in Going Home - how about as simple as the skipper of the John Hancock was superior to him as to time in rank and thus would be the Task Force Commander
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I thought that even when a fleet or task force commander is aboard a given vessel, that vessel will still have it's own captain. And the Tarawa is far, far better suited to the role of command ship, surely? In any case, at least some of the surface combatants escorting the Omega fleet back to the US must have crossed the Atlantic to Bremerhaven prior to the Omega fleet being assembled. I'd be amazed if MilGov didn't have at least one admiral or rear admiral available either already in Germany or at Norfolk and available to cross the Atlantic prior to the Omega fleet's assembly, ready and very much willing to command the Omega fleet.
Following ideas previously put forward by others on this forum, I've been tending towards the Tarawa being grounded and semi or non-functional somewhere along the Polish or Baltic coast. However I don't think it would be out of the question for the Tarawa to have been capable of being refloated and towed back to friendly waters but not being in a suitable condition for an Atlantic crossing with the Omega fleet. IIRC many of the remaining US forces in the UK made their own return to the CONUS post-Omega. Perhaps by then the Tarawa could have undergone sufficient repair and refit in a UK harbour to be the flagship for that second, mini-Omega?