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The USS Ramage
The USS Ramage is part of the first carrier strike force sent to Israel after the Hamas October attack.
USS Ramage (DDG-61) is an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer of the United States Navy. The ship is named for Vice Admiral Lawson P. Ramage, a notable submarine commander and Medal of Honor recipient in World War II.
Japan lost 5 ships in 46 minutes in a daring surface attack by the USS Parche.
‘Red’ nicknamed for his red hair, Ramage Medal of Honor Citation:
“For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as commanding officer of the U.S.S. Parche in a predawn attack on a Japanese convoy, 31 July 1944. Boldly penetrating the screen of a heavily escorted convoy, Comdr. Ramage launched a perilous surface attack by delivering a crippling stern shot into a freighter and quickly following up with a series of bow and stern torpedoes to sink the leading tanker and damage the second one.
Exposed by the light of bursting flares and bravely defiant of terrific shellfire passing close overhead, he struck again, sinking a transport by two forward reloads. In the mounting fury of fire from the damaged and sinking tanker, he calmly ordered his men below, remaining on the bridge to fight it out with an enemy now disorganized and confused.
Swift to act as a fast transport closed in to ram, Comdr. Ramage daringly swung the stern of the speeding Parche as she crossed the bow of the onrushing ship, clearing by less than 50 feet but placing his submarine in a deadly crossfire from escorts on all sides and with the transport dead ahead. Undaunted, he sent three smashing “down the throat” bow shots to stop the target, then scored a killing hit as a climax to 46 minutes of violent action with the Parche and her valiant fighting company retiring victorious and unscathed.”
Published in Military
Deserves at least a picture:
Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Ramage (DDG 61)
This one’s ;for scale
An Arleigh Burke destroyer is the most capable warship that ever sailed. A Burke owns the airspace for well over a hundred miles in any direction. The only comparable warships in any realm are our attack submarines (of which we will not speak.)
An Arleigh Burke is a thing of real beauty – strength and refinement, all dynamic. These ships are built to fight.
An SM-2 block III missile costs at least two and a half million dollars, as far as I can easily find. More if it’s had one of the latest upgrades. USS Carney executed on 9 missile and 4 drone targets from Yemen, if the news is correct.
I dunno, I seem to recall those 16-inch guns doing a lot of damage.
Arleigh Burke destroyers definitely inhabit the “if it flies, it dies” category of air defense systems.
Ramage’s Rampage. A hero to all submariners.
When asked why he put himself in that much danger to sink ships, Ramage said, “I got mad!”
Here’s a video diagramming the battle.
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My uncle, Charles Welton, was a torpedoman on the USS Parche. I didn’t know that until after he died, but my dad (his brother-in-law) says he talked to him about it a lot.
So what did he have for breakfast?
And we have more than a handful of fleet carriers.
If you ever run into a Burke v. Carrier situation, bet on the destroyer.
The destroyer would jam the battleship’s gun radar, put three torpedos into it, then cut up the hulk with 5″ rounds.
I was referring to damage to the enemy, not to ourselves. (Or any other ships.) And the enemy mostly on shore.
I’m not aware of Hamas, or Hezbollah, or Iran for that matter, having much of a navy to worry about.
You are absolutely correct. @kedavis’ point is not bad, but there have been no battleships equipped with the modern suite of tools. Ramage would sink an Iowa every day of the week.
The Burkes are the culmination of the Spruance and Ticonderoga lines of effort, and the magnificent but abortive Kidd class. Not that these are all variations on the Spruance, which was an unpleasantly revolutionary program from concept, through procurement and deployment, up until the “space for growth” started getting tight.
I’d say that the Ticos are better than the Burkes, but there aren’t many left, each one is old, and incremental improvements to all of the components aboard (which have simply not been applid to Ticos en masse) mean that in general, the Burkes win. As a Tico guy, I can admit that, and I wish we had about a HUNDRED MORE of the damned stubby Burkes.
Instead, we got the frankly counterproductive LCS (which was really two distinct failed classes wrapped into one failed procurement package) and the ever-more retarded Zumwalts. Twenty years of stupid decision-making by the Navy means that we have a crisis in surface combatants, and the admirals stand around looking stupid, putting blame where they can.
Caveat: I know some damned fine people who worked on LCS — that doesn’t make the program or the product any good — it isn’t.
Every ship we have goes to sea somewhere between 80% and 90% manned. Wish I had those sailors back who got diverted into the stupid LCS and Zumwalt programs.
I also favor a high-low Burke mix — not every SC needs to be an all-singing, all-dancing, AW kingpin of the Aegis variety. I’d like to use the same hull and plant to support a focused SUW version to accompany other more rounded-out forces because our SUW game is incredibly weak. Let that guy carry around a pile of SSMs and LAMs, without Aegis and its manning/cubes penalty, resting on the protection ofered by the rest of the group.
Problem is, we’re now so buffalo’d by China that we are disaggregating strike groups which is touted as some radical new networked modern strategy, but is really scattering for defense with some mitigations added.
We can operate strike groups as such in the Med because there is no China and effectively no Russia there.
Oookaay. You betcha.
This only works if the carrier has no aircraft. Which would be like sending the Burke out with no ammo.
You forgot to say “perfectly named,” because Zumwalt acted retarded himself. My dad (CWO-4 before the 5 came out) hated him. He has lots of stories, some first-hand, about Zumwalt’s damage to the navy.
The older CPOs always talked trash about Zumwalt and Jimmy Carter when I was on the sub.