Satellite footage shows the Iranian UNREP ship Kharg, lying on its starboard side in shallow water near Jansk in the Gulf of Oman, with the bottom of the hull above water, and with much of the hull, port bridge wing, helo hangar, and flight deck visible from above.
It burned and sank in a region of sensitive waterways through which about 20% of the world’s oil trade passes, and where there have been accusations of attacks on ships of enemies Iran and Israel, with Israel attacking a dozen Iranian oil tankers bound for Syria in violation of an oil embargo, since late 2019, and Iran reported to have attacked ships with limpet mines. Iran did not immediately give the cause of the sinking, but a fire was reported to have started in the ship’s engine room at approximately 11:00 a.m. on 1 June.
Was she run the way Iranian ships are notoriously run – sloppy maintenance, inattention to details? Or was she sabotaged?
Iran ordered the ship from the English shipyard Swan Hunter in October 1974 in a contract worth £40 million (equivalent to $54 million). Kharg was laid down on 27 January 1976, launched on 3 February 1977.
So she was not new when she burned and sank.
The Progressive Oil Agenda
Democrat Party contributors control railroad rolling stock that’s used to move oil from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico – thus oil pipelines bad.
President Trump supported domestic oil production as a means of American independence from the former dependence on foreign sources of oil. The US doesn’t need to buy foreign oil. Maybe we deal with Canada but that’s it.
The Oligarchs that pull Biden’s strings don’t see it the same way that I do. Imagine that?
I do understand that the politics of oil makes strange bedfellows. One reason that the US became involved with Afghanistan had to do with oil pipelines that cut through the northeast part of that country. Bin Laden was not an excuse, but oil ran through it in the same way it does with a lot of countries. If we’d wanted to wipe out the 9/11 culprits and planners, we’d have gone after Saudi Arabia…our allies.
By the way, if you see a vegan driving a gasoline-powered car, shame them for using animal projects…I just thought that I’d throw that one in.
Meme-of-the-Day
Sound advice.
It’s along the same line as not ejecting from your jet over people you have just bombed.
Big Oooops
A bad day at work — A $22 Million F-22A Raptor crashed and skidded on its belly during a botched takeoff in Nevada last April because its pilot was using the wrong takeoff data and prematurely retracted his landing gear, according to an Air Force investigation. Call sign “Top Gun”. Hubris overload.
Glider Infantry
During World War 2, the allies, and to a lesser extent, the Germans, used gliders to deliver infantry in airborne operations. They were often used in conjunction with parachute infantry and would land with light equipment such a Jeeps or smaller anti-tank guns, or necessary gear associated with short-term ops. within the LZ and to take objectives.
Today similar activities are undertaken by heavy helicopters, tilt rotors, etc.
I wouldn’t want to fly to war in a glider. I’d rather parachute…at night…in the rain.
In the rain, you inevitably get a slower canopy deployment, making for a softer ride down. Nobody can see you to shoot at you, but you can’t see where you’re landing. Every rose has its thorn.
Norman Corn, an Osage Indian who lived in my town, never talked about his service in WW 2 until Veterans Day at the Lions club. We met at 06:30 for a breakfast meeting, and my speaker had dumped on me. I asked the members who were veterans to share a story if they felt comfortable doing that. Most stories were pretty innocuous, but Norman who hardly ever spoke held his hand up so I called on him. His words were this, “I was in the 101st Airborne, I jumped out of a plane over Normandy on the night before D-Day, jumped out of another plane over Holland during operation market garden, and jumped out of the back of a truck at Bastone. I never jumped out of anything ever again. Every time I jumped out of something, bad things happened!” The other veterans gave him a standing ovation.
All honor to Norman Corn.
+1
Night jumps, I seemed to find the only tree in the landing zone.
I feel your pain. Jumping a T-10 or even a modified T-10, you. have very little maneuvering capacity. The newer T-11 is still non-maneuvering. The Hi-5 Ram Air parachute + Night Vision offers little in the way of depth perception, but if there aren’t a lot of trees, you can avoid them – most of the time.
Watching the jumps in The Longest Day seemed scary to say the least.
An opposed jump is a horrible thing.
The Burlington Northern RR runs a track that goes near my house. The other day a long train consisting of tankers went by headed north. My guess is they were empties headed back to be refilled. Mr. Buffet needs to be rewarded I suppose.
He will want every penny back that he dumped into the Donkey coffers with significant interest.
Too bad Omar and her 3 dirt bag cohorts weren’t visiting their pals on the Kharg…would have made a decent start in cleaning the rotten leech and roach infested House and Senate.
Oil: Time to wrest power from the Fed’s back to the states and stop this crap before some Imbecile With A Pen can trash local economies at a whim. To flip that fast from energy independence to foreign sources shows how screwed up things are. Sure, oil is a fungible resource, but only a moron would prefer desert king oil over…say…North Dakota. But that’s their play to keep us dependent. I prefer independent.
Someone who handled leasing agreements for my dad, we were climbing some rock face and he started speaking of his Ranger night jumps…a few hundred feet if I recall. He was tough as nails (but nice) into his late years.
Yeah. Omar. She needs to be sent back to her people.
A GoFundMe would garner a few hundred thousand in short order to make that happen, even tho they’ll take it down before we could spend the funds.
Some guys in my unit stated they would only jump if they were drunk or high. I tried to stay away from them. I was scared enough as it was
Water jumps are scary. Water jumps at night are worse.
Re the Progressive Oil Agenda: Maybe if Mexico had an efficient, privatized oil industry, then Mexicans could get lucrative oil field jobs in their own country and wouldn’t come here to find work. I wonder if that ever occurred to Kamala.
I’ve seen Mexico described as a beggar sitting on a sack of gold.
And yet, they appear to admire the kleptocrats who are keeping them in poverty.
The cartels call the shots. Not all the shots, but CJNG (Guadalajara Cartel) has massive control over the oil.
Don, I don’t think that much occurs to Kamala. She had skills back when she was younger. Those talents took her a long way but she Peter-Principled herself thirty years ago.
IRIS Kharg. Hanlon’s razor?
1965 Mainz, joint training exercise, a few of us engineers went for a ride in a German Army troop glider. Very high pucker factor.
They must have thought that you were expendible.
Nah, just officers running around doing officer shit.
I see.
It’s true, an idle mind is the devil’s workshop.
I watched a TV program about US and energi. Strange to see all presidents after WW2 saying an energy independent US is important and they all will do what it takes.
Finally the US makes it and become a net exporter og energy. Then comes Biden.
Biden and his minders do not have American hearts.
The Politics of Oil, kinda like the Glen Frye song “Smuggler’s Blues”. One of my best buddies and I used to play a board game called “Oil War”, by an outfit called “Strategy & Tactics”.
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/5382/oil-war-american-intervention-persian-gulf
We had a bunch of refineries in the area I grew up in, so naturally I knew more than a few refinery workers. Even back in the 170’s, The Politics of Oil was one of the most arcane issues I’d ever had some knowledge of.
One of my Uncles went in to Noramandy by parachute just after 0000 6 June. At night, but I don’t know if it was raining.
OOOOPS….meant 1970’s. Damn keyboard….
Re the Kharg, that’s also 7 missile boats that WON’T end up in Venezuela, which is good… The F-22 issue is endemic of the pilots today, they follow the ‘checklist’ blindly without actually ‘flying’ the airplane. They do ‘rote’ steps, believing the computer is infallible… Which it ain’t… We got OPARS back in the day, but we still ran our OWN calculations, since it was OUR shiny butts in the airplane. I’ll stick with airplanes, NO desire to leave a perfectly good flying machine! 😉
I was always taught to confirm positive climb rate before retracting the gear. Preselected gear up relying on the Weight on wheels switches has caused this accident before (RAF Red Arrows no less) and will again. If the pilot rotates too early, the struts may extend sufficiently to trip WOW switches and the gear comes up before the jet has enough lift to not settle back on the runway at 150kts…. BTW I think the F22 cost listed is a little low… $22M apiece would be awesome, though.
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