U.S. Naval Accidents

What’s to wonder at the sudden spate of accidents in the U.S. Navy? When we had an Administration that couldn’t (and still can’t) distinguish appearance from reality, that thought wars are won by locker-room speeches by the Gipper, an Administration that appointed a saber-rattling pipsqueak Navy secretary, for whom 600 ships is a magic number, something was bound to give. Illusions of grandeur frequently cost lives.

The U.S. Navy learned from the Monitor and the Merrimac that wooden ships and sails were done for. But we took superannuated battleships out of mothballs and poured funds into glitzy aircraft carriers which cannot be defended against small flying nuclear devices. We assume that technology alone will do it.

It was a time for intelligent decision in a new world of new weapons, and we blew it. Now it’s time we faced the full implications of the nuclear age and its human control dimensions.

FREDERIC E. PAMP, Santa Ynez