Quote:
Originally Posted by helbent4
Nate,
Such disasters pre-date the modern computerised era, of course!
In 1893 two British pre-Dreadnaught battleships (HMS Camperdown and HMS Victoria) collided while on exercises and sank. It's a somewhat complicated story but it boils down to how a reputedly brilliant admiral planned a showy maneuver, and no one questioned his calculations either through blind faith or a rigid adherence to orders:
http://ahoy.tk-jk.net/macslog/Stupid...ndthenAdm.html
Not exactly a "stupid GI" trick!
Tony |
Very true Tony... i was just going by something i had heard about that happened during the past twenty years. Because I swear I read about the two ships swapping paint after I got out of the Navy... and that it had happened at night, and the computers acted up and said the ships were about twenty meters further apart than they actually were. Thus when they saw the running lights they thought everything was okay, the guys on watch were saying "i think they are too damn close!" and the offical statements were "no the computer says were safely apart" and when they got really close even the officers in charge said "They're to f**king close!" and started to pull out of their turns. and they scrapped as they turned apart.
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Fuck being a hero. Do you know what you get for being a hero? Nothing! You get shot at. You get a little pat on the back, blah blah blah, attaboy! You get divorced... Your wife can't remember your last name, your kids don't want to talk to you... You get to eat a lot of meals by yourself. Trust me kid, nobody wants to be that guy. I do this because there is nobody else to do it right now. Believe me if there was somebody else to do it, I would let them do it. There's not, so I'm doing it.
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