Friday, September 15, 2017

Why Was The U.S. Navy Spy Submarine USS Jimmy Carter Flying The Jolly Roger


Popular Mechanics: Why a U.S. Navy Spy Submarine Is Flying the Jolly Roger

The skull and crossbones flag is traditionally flown to celebrate successful missions—but just what has the USS Jimmy Carter been up to?

A U.S. Navy attack submarine capable of carrying out top-secret undersea missions recently returned home flying the Jolly Roger—that skull and crossbones pirate flag. But why?

The question was on the minds of many this week after Canada-based defense journalist Ian Keddie posted on Twitter the photo of the nuclear attack submarine USS Jimmy Carter. The photo, uploaded to the Defense Video Imagery Distribution System, or DVIDS for short, shows the commanding officer of the Jimmy Carter, Commander Melvin Smith, looking on as the submarine returns to its home at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor.

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WNU Editor: There is some speculation in the above article on what the USS Jimmy Carter was doing during its "deployment".

Update: Why did one of the U.S. Navy’s most advanced subs return to port with a pirate flag? (Washington Post)

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Tapping an undersea cable? I can't imagine the need for that in this day & age.

Picking up debris,rocket engines, from the the sea floor with submersible robots?

Serial #s, lot #s, manufacturer codes, etc.

Chinese, Russians, Ukrainians, or North Koreans in trouble...

A factory could not put on serial #s etc and still operate. But when they ran into manufacturing/quality problems, it might be very difficult to iron out.

Outside of such data they could look at tool marks & other things. That has got to be iffy due to re-entry impact, corrosion,...


Maybe you would not want to tell the world for various reason until you knew what you actually had.

Maybe you still would not tell but in a private meeting threaten another diplomat within an inch of their lives.


The flag part is just good fun. They can't talk about it. But they do have their
coup stick and it keeps morale up.

Maybe they are just doing it as part of psyops and it was a nothing cruise. :)

SCOTTYD said...

I didn't see any mention of the damage to hull. Is that not a crack in the picture? Puncture of some kimd.

War News Updates Editor said...

Scott,
It looks like a new weld. A past collision?

Anonymous said...

That does look like a repair...and in my honest opinion that's the type of repair made at sea, and not in the yard. I can only imagine that to be some kind of super "slash zone", not available at your local boat store.