Fullbore Friday

This man helped influence untold numbers of men and women towards service in our Navy, and through informed fiction, generations to partially understand such a pivotal era of our nation's history.

Such a long, full and influential life. Herman Wouk - BZ and thank you.

Herman Wouk, the prolific and immensely popular writer who explored the moral fallout of World War II in the Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Caine Mutiny” and other widely read books that gave Americans a raw look at the horrors and consequences of war, has died at his Palm Springs home, where he wrote many of his acclaimed novels.

Wouk, who was honored by the Library of Congress in September 2008 with its first lifetime achievement award for fiction writing, died in his sleep Friday at the age of 103, his literary agent Amy Rennert told the Associated Press. Wouk was working on a book at the time of his death, Rennert said.

As a writer, Wouk considered his most “vaultingly ambitious” work the twin novels “The Winds of War” and “War and Remembrance,” about “the great catastrophe of our time,” World War II. Critics, however, considered “The Caine Mutiny” to be his finest work.

The books are always better than the movies, but here are some highlights;







H/t Scoobs

Saturday Movie Stop: Operation Red Sea

Chris Cavas mentioned this to us last Midrats.

I think it pretty much speaks for itself.

This in not your father's China ... as we've been warning people here for years.

Oh, it's International Women's Day?

In the name of all that his holy, instead of focusing on the brave women in Iran or the huge advancements in a little under a century since giving women the vote, I find myself surrounded by comments banal, virtue signaling, posturing, or just a dog's breakfast of transparent silliness that one usually finds on these patronizing "days." 

I've been left a bit cold.

So, in honor of the 20th anniversary of one of the greatest achievements in cinema, I give you a good representation of me watching International Women's Day.

Gene Wilder Tribute

About the best way I can think of to give a nod a man who led a full and funny life would be to play a sample of bits from the movie he was in that I enjoyed the most.

Of course ...

Diversity Thursday

Though there are some very real outrages that deserve this slot today (as there are every day), there really can be one DivThu that you need to see this week.

And it starts with one of MSNBC's professional racists - so it fits.

Hell Club

Your weekend is complete.

Fullbore Friday

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Tall ships? Angry whales? I'm in!

It looks like this may be made right.

For those who know the basis for the book Moby Dick, then you should already have your heart beating a bit more right now.

Ron Howard is bringing epic book of the true story, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex to the big screen;

I actually feel sorry for Tapper here

In the universe of journalists, Jake Tapper is one of the good ones. He is an exceptional professional, fair, and open minded. He has also done more than most to try to get the story out about those who have served.



Especially for someone who has not worn the uniform, he mostly gets it right. This time with Marcus Luttrell, he missed. While Tapper was perhaps making comments about the AFG war in general - this interview was about a very specific operation - and that is what Marcus was focused on. 

From a journalistic point of view, I think Tapper has turned the knob a bit to 11 looking for the "bad planner" and "incompetent leadership" or worse, cover-up to protect those responsible. Somethings, things just go to sh1t.

Maybe he is right, but there is something else. Now and then, things do not go right. When you plan, you have certain planning assumptions, restraints, constraints; you do your troops-to-task analysis and hope for the best. Sometimes you get one or all of your planning assumptions wrong - you can't see in the future. Sometimes the convoy to the enemy leadership meeting gets confused with the convoy going to a wedding party. Sometimes when trying to aviate, navigate, and communicate you confuse the target position with the blue positions. Sometimes you say 030 when you clearly have 050 in front of you. Sometimes, you just live in an imperfect world. That is, perhaps, where he is getting the professional issue wrong.

Tapper is also getting a personal issue wrong, I think. It is a common mistake a lot of people with good intentions people make. As most have not served, they only know what being in the military at war is like from a theoretical point of view. What they read, see on the TV, the impressions of others whose personal specifics become the listeners general assumption. 

As a result, they know what it means to serve and to go to war like the rest of us know what it is to travel in to space. Tapper is good - but no one is perfect - so in this case I will cut him some slack.

It is easy for some to fall in to old habits and comfortable archetype; the victim, the compassionate observer, the concerned supporter. The last two lean on the first; the victim. In trying to find common ground, they reach for the easiest reference point. Some who have worn the uniform, in my experience those who have other issues, will try to play the victim card for attention. 

Those who seek someone to help will gravitate to those who want to feel helped. The shame of it all is that in most cases, those who have served who may actually need "help" don't want it. They won't ask for it, and if you imply that you think they need help - they will not appreciate the effort. They don't want your sympathy, they don't want your thanks, and they don't want to be patronized. Some do, but they are like the crickets in the cow-field; small and insignificant - but exceptionally loud.

When confronted with the well meaning but wrong, when able most on the receiving end will be polite, say something harmless, and then try to change the subject. Others can quickly tire of the unwanted embrace, the assumptions of the broken vessel, the mythology of Hollywood and the attention seeker becoming fact. From having to deal with the clueless repeating the latest they read about PTSD, to well meaning people who assume a lot what they think those who served want to hear.

Eventually, you get enough. That is what you saw above. Shipmate has had enough. BZ Marcus. BZ.

The TV is over there silly ...

In case you missed the post over at USNIBlog on Monday;

The Assets, an eight-part ABC miniseries event based on Circle of Treason will premiere on January 2, 2014 at 10|9 c. The series is based on Circle of Treason and will look inside the true, personal stories of the conclusion of the Cold War as told by the keepers of the nation’s secrets: the CIA. The series is produced for ABC by Lincoln Square Productions. Morgan Hertzan, Rudy Bednar, and Andrew Chapman are executive producers for the series.

In Honor of Peter O'Toole

He had a good and full life; well played.

He also gave me one of my favorite scenes in any movie.

Fullbore Friday

What do you have in your closet?

What steps are you willing to take to pull living history out of the shadows?

In WWII - are you willing to go over Nazi Germany alone, unarmed ... dozens of times?



Spitfire 944. Humble ... but Fullbore.

A mighty BZ to William Lorton and Jason Savage ... and Jason's grandfather, "Doc."

Hat tip SS and TW.

The Walking Dead at Sea

Well ... not quite. Everyone on FB was having fun with this yesterday, so I thought I would bring it over here.

It seems that only 10% comes from the book, if that. I'm not asking much ... just don't suck as much as Battleship.

I could quibble about 4 months without UNREP or that even under EMCON you can receive messages, the "take enough for deployment" use of hair gel, the inability to properly pronounce Nawfauwk ... etc ... etc ... but let it roll and have fun.



I'd be interested if anyone in San Diego went to this casting call for it.

In praise of crushing disorder

This is supposed to be a bad thing?

His portrayal of the enormous United States military operation to free Phillips from his captors has the calm technological blankness of a Navy commercial, without the 1970s waka-waka guitar. I can’t decide if there’s meant to be anything sardonic about the presentation of the asymmetrical conflict in “Captain Phillips”: Billions of dollars of cutting-edge military hardware and hundreds of corn-fed, gym-toned Americans on one side, four malnourished men with black-market Kalashnikovs on the other. But I kind of think there isn’t.

Andrew O'Hehir @Salon; what a spoiled, sheltered, pampered little man, and kind of pathetic.

Wait ... it's Thursday, right?

There’s a racial or cultural subtext to this film that’s right on the boundary of consciousness, and cannot entirely be ascribed to verisimilitude. Hanks’ Phillips – the only fully realized character in the entire film – remains a calm and rational actor until he is pushed to the limit of human endurance. The Navy officers, SEAL team members and other military personnel are competent, emotionless automata, seen mostly in shadows or illuminated by their electronic gizmos. But the Somalis behave like unmedicated hyperactive children with guns – they’re wild-eyed and hot-tempered, vacillating from murderous rage to companionable good humor and back again every few seconds. “Captain Phillips” is less an adventure yarn about the daring rescue of a captured American than a celebration of a huge and expensive machine that crushes disorder.

Check in the block complete.

Does he really have any grasp what global disorder is? Does he have any idea what the world would be like if the premier power was not a representative republic?

Think Russia with a little Venezuela thrown in for good measure.

I think we may have found a negative indicator. If Andrew hates a movie; it is a must-see. If he loves it; don't go to see it unless you have knitting needles to stick through your eyes and ears.



Hat tip Jawa.

Dude, when is the US release date?

The plot is an original script written by Ilya Tilkin who studied museum archives and diaries of the participants in the Stalingrad Battle before she wrote and finished her script. Original meant there were no novelistic sources used for the entire picture’s play-script.

The movie’s story revolves around German troops trying to take down a Stalingrad (Current name is Volgograd) residential building that was doggedly held out by a band of few Russian soldiers with a sole surviving female resident.

The plot line is based on the legends surrounding the Pavlov’s House, so named as it was a fortified apartment edifice which Russian Sergeant Yakov Pavlov along with his platoon who occupied the building defended during the Battle of Stalingrad.

The Russians get it 10 OCT, but any story derived from the story of Pavlov's house needs a showing here.

Sunday Funnies

I ask but one thing ...

Please do the book, the men, and the war justice.

Add to your nuance, if you have any, about The War Between the States

This will be interesting to see the critical reaction to its release. Copperheads.

In his first two Civil War movies, director Ron Maxwell told The New American, his desire was to examine both the men in blue and in gray “equally” by “looking into their hearts” to see what motivated them. “I got a lot of flak, because some in the mainstream media don’t want to look upon any man who wore a Confederate uniform as a full human being.”

“The first two movies are a cinematic presentation of why good men choose to fight,” while Copperhead is an effort “to explore cinematically, why good and honorable, ethical, moral men choose not to go to war,” Maxwell said. “Not everybody who hated slavery or loved the U.S. Constitution was willing to send their children off to die or be maimed in a bloody battle against fellow Americans. That fascinating reality is the force driving Copperhead.”

The movie is based upon the late-19th-century work of Harold Frederic, who used real-life events he witnessed in upstate New York during the war in crafting his novel, The Copperhead. “I call him [Frederic] the Charles Dickens of upstate New York,” Maxwell explained. “If you want to know about rural America in upstate New York in the 19th century, he’s the guy.”

Another untold part of our history that needs to be told; Tory militia in the Carolinas during the American Revolution.

I really hope there is no "love interest"

But .... Tom Hanks as Captain Phillips? OK.

Therapist 1: call your office

Hollywierd is in a major funk. What is with all the dead-Earth vibe?

Exhibit 1.



Exhibit 2.




Oh, still waiting for the Fallujah movie; just 9-years since you found your lead.