Welcome to MSW’s Scuttlebutt! Here’s the news for the day.



Victory at Sea – Battle of Midway
Today marks the anniversary of the battle that put an end to Japan’s juggernaut in the pacific, the battle of Midway.
Victory at Sea


Navy Word of the Day
Continuing on with your Naval education we bring you another installment of MSW’s Navy Word of the Day.
Navy Word of the Day




National Museum of the Pacific War

Today’s website is the National Museum of the Pacific War. In the middle of Texas, a significant maritime museum located in Fredericksburg which focuses on the life and times of Admiral Chester W. Nimitz in the hotel his grandfather built in 1855. The adjacent George Bush Gallery has become the National Museum of the Pacific War which includes the original Nimitz Hotel Museum site and an outdoor exhibition area with aircraft and other exhibits. Enjoy.
Website




This Day in U.S. Naval History

1934 - USS Ranger (CV 4), first ship designed from the keel up as a carrier, is commissioned at Norfolk, Va.
1942 - Battle of Midway (June 4-6) begins. During battle, the four Japanese carriers which attacked Pearl Harbor are sunk; this decisive U.S. victory is a turning point in the Pacific war.
1944 - Hunter-killer group USS Guadalcanal (CVE 60) captures German submarine, U 505.


Bataan Commemorates Battle of Midway
Source: US Navy

USS BATAAN, At Sea (NNS) -- The crew of the multipurpose amphibious assault ship USS Bataan (LHD 5) took a time out from at-sea operations June 3 to reflect on and celebrate a group of seafaring heroes and one of the country's most important naval victories -- the Battle of Midway.

Decked out in utilities with 'Dixie' cups and working khakis with black ties and combination covers, Bataan's crew attempted to recreate the look and battle rhythm of their shipmates in 1942.

Midway announcements were made on the ship's general announcing system throughout the day, and the Defense Media Activity-Anacostia's documentary, "Destination Point Luck – Voices From Midway," played continuously on Bataan's closed-circuit television station.

"The crew donned their old utilities and wash khakis to recreate some of the old photos in the Navy's archives," said Command Master Chief Brian Collier.

"It's the last time we're going to be wearing the wash khakis, at least until the dress khakis come out, and the crew embraced it well. It gave us a chance to have a lot of fun and to look back on our heritage and that great generation of our past."

Midway took place June 4–7, 1942 and is considered to be the turning point of the war in the Pacific. With the help of American code breakers, a carrier strike force, augmented by shore-based patrol bombers, decisively defeated an Imperial Japanese navy carrier task force. The Navy's actions in the Pacific prevented Japanese forces from capturing Midway and changed the course of the war.

While not a single member of the Bataan crew was alive during those heroic events, the celebration allowed them to remember a great victory and tremendous sacrifice.

"It kind of takes us back in time so we can live it, feel it," said Equipment Technician 2nd Class (AW) William Cepeda, Bataan's junior Sailor of the quarter. "I'm kind of young so I wasn't around, and I don't have any family that was in the military at that time either, so it's cool to see the events and the things that happened."

The Midway commemoration will be felt by more than just Bataan's crew.

"When I have Sailors and Marines come up to me asking for a copy of pictures, so they can send copies to their grandfather, that to me is a significant statement that they get it," said Collier. "They are out here just like the Sailors and Marines of yesterday. They are mission focused and ready to answer all bells to perform at the tip of the spear."

Battle of Midway celebrations will take place throughout the fleet, beginning June 4; Bataan's crew celebrated a day early due to the ship's operational schedule.

The U.S. Navy Memorial will host a commemoration of the Battle of Midway June 4 in Washington, D.C.

The ceremony will be broadcast live at 2 p.m. EDT on Navy.mil, the Pentagon Channel and the Direct-to-Sailor Network.


Sub Sets Record in Dive to Ocean's Deepest Trench
Source: LiveScience.com

A robotic vehicle named Nereus has made the deepest ocean dive ever - 6.8 miles (10,902 meters), a team of scientists and engineers reported yesterday. At this depth, Nereus was able to explore the Challenger Deep - the ocean's lowest point, located in the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific.

Nereus took the plunge Sunday. It was the first exploration of the Marina Trench since 1998.

"Much of the ocean's depths remain unexplored," said Julie Morris, director of the National Science Foundation's Division of Ocean Sciences, which funded the project. "Ocean scientists now have a unique tool to gather images, data and samples from everywhere in the oceans, rather than those parts shallower than 6,500 meters (4 miles). With its innovative technology, Nereus allows us to study and understand previously inaccessible ocean regions."

Nereus is a new type of ocean vehicle, called a hybrid remotely operated vehicle (HROV). It is controlled by scientists aboard a surface ship via a fiber-optic tether. In addition to being able to dive deep, Nereus can also switch to a free swimming mode.

"The team is pleased that Nereus has been successful in reaching the very bottom of the ocean to return imagery and samples from such a hostile world" said Andy Bowen, project manager and principal developer of Nereus at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). "With a robot like Nereus we can now explore anywhere in the ocean. The trenches are virtually unexplored, and Nereus will enable new discoveries there."

Nereus has a lightweight tethering system. A traditional system uses steel-reinforced cable made of copper that powers a vehicle, and optical fibers that enable information to be passed between the ship and the vehicle. But if such a cable were used to reach the Mariana Trench, it would snap under its own weight before it traveled that deep.

To solve the problem, the Nereus team adapted fiber-optic technology developed by the Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific to carry real-time video and other data between the Nereus and the surface crew. Close to the diameter of a human hair and with a breaking strength of only 8 pounds, the tether is composed of glass fiber with a very thin protective jacket of plastic.

WHOI engineers also developed a hydraulically operated, lightweight robotic manipulator arm that could operate under intense pressure.

Overall, the deep-diving vehicle weighs nearly 3 tons in air and is about 14 feet (4.25 meters) long and about 8 feet (2.3 meters) wide. It is powered by more than 4,000 lithium-ion batteries.

During its dive to the Challenger Deep, Nereus spent more than 10 hours on the bottom. It sent live video back to the ship through its fiber-optic tether and collected biological and geological samples with its manipulator arm.

"The samples collected by the vehicle include sediment from the tectonic plates that meet at the trench and, for the first time, rocks from deep exposures of the Earth's crust close to mantle depths south of the Challenger Deep," said geologist Patty Fryer of the University of Hawaii, who also went on the expedition. "We will know the full story once shore-based analyses are completed back in the laboratory this summer. We can integrate them with the new mapping data to tell a story of plate collision in greater detail than ever before accomplished in the world's oceans."

Nereus was also funded by the Office of Naval Research, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Russell Family Foundation and WHOI.


Photo of the Day



The USS Hornet conducting flight operations during the Battle of Midway.

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