A U.S. cruiser and destroyer moored in Hong Kong last weekend.
When Typhoon Fengshen bore down near Hong Kong last weekend, the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and its strike group left the port and headed back out to sea.
More than 100 sailors got left behind.
As the South China Morning Post wrote in its introductory paragraph about the event, some sailors woke up and wondered: “Dude, where’s my carrier strike group?”
Somewhere in the Pacific, that’s where.
Since ships are often safer on the high seas than moored in port, where they are more vulnerable to storm damage, the strike group decided to end port leave early Sunday. But they couldn’t notify all 7,000 or so sailors in the strike group that “liberty” had been cut short.
Not that the marooned sailors were too unhappy.
"I'm sure they're not tremendously depressed, but they're out there. We'll get them back soon," Navy spokesman Lt. Ron Flanders told the newspaper (which is behind a pay wall and a link would be useless).
The carrier group includes the nuclear powered carrier, a cruiser, three destroyers and a frigate – all fairly fast vessels.
The Navy will fly sailors ahead to the strike group’s next port. Meanwhile, those left behind passed time in – what else? – bars. “Hong Kong is a fantastic city to be stuck in," one sailor told the paper.
Now all we need is for the Royal Navy to come by with a Press Gang and round up all these people and send them to Afghanistan or Iraq.
Posted by: A B | June 26, 2008 at 05:15 AM