Navy guy straightens out the media

Dimitri has a post here that addresses something that irks me.

Often, when the media refer to a warship, of any sort, they refer to it generically as simply...

"a battleship". 

The media exposes its ignorance of all things military frequently, like a few years ago when TIME magazine chose as "person of the year" the U.S. soldier, which is peachy, but when TIME was deluged with letters asking why not the American "sailor", "marine", or "airman

, TIME's response was essentially: "They're the same thing".

As they say,..

Here's a little primer for all of us.

This is a battleship, very big, fast, armored, with independent high-caliber rifled guns in separate turrets.  Named after states.  Here: the U.S.S. Iowa

                                 Boom!

This is a destroyer.  Destroyers are small, fast,  unarmored, but heavily armed combat ships, they are sleek and trim.  Destroyers are named after naval heroes.

This is the U.S.S. Dehaven, which was my first ship many years ago as a young sailor-boy.

Hey look, it's a schooner!  Schooners are beautiful ships that generally have only one jib style sail per mast.  Schooners, are fast, unarmed, beautiful, and named after anything that strikes their owner's fancy.
I'd name this schooner the "Ooh-la-la!

This is a soldier.  Soldiers are members of the U.S. Army.
Their families love them.  Welcome home Mike!

This is a sailor.  Sailors are members of the U.S. Navy.  Sailors used to act like this a lot.

Boom! goes the baby-boom.

This is a Marine.  He's in the United States Marine Corps.  Marines are always very angry, even though many of them are very nice people.  Don't annoy the Marine.
"I'm looking for things to be angry at!" says the purposefully striding Marine.

And this is a bell-hop:
He gets tips.

I hope that ABC news tunes into my blog and finds it instructive.

For a video I did on naval ships click here.

That is all.

Mannie