On 9/11, 2001, the Navy stood at 316 ships. By 2008, after one of the great military buildups in American history, we were at 278 ships and had 49,000 fewer sailors.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Of whatsoever number a fleet of ships of war is composed, it is usually divided into three squadrons; and these, if numerous, are again separated into divisions.
Seven million ship cargo containers come into the United States every year. Five to seven percent only are inspected - five to seven percent.
In my opinion, any navy less than that which would give us the habitual command of our own coast and seas would be little short of useless.
We got orders to strike the Marshall and Gilbert Islands. We had a task force with the Enterprise. We had two or three cruisers and probably eight or 10 destroyers.
The United States has the largest and best navy in the world.
We have built a total of about 1250 of this aircraft, but only fifty were allowed to be used as fighters - as interceptors. And out of this fifty, there were never more than 25 operational. So we had only a very, very few.
The ship was masted according to the proportion of the navy; but on my application the masts were shortened, as I thought them too much for her, considering the nature of the voyage.
The more ships have grown in size and consequence, the more their place in our imagination has shrunk.
All we had aboard the ship that morning was one Annapolis graduate and three reserves.
We have nine ships and in the next two years will have ten, eleven and twelve. So things are going very nicely and all because of that program that people thought was mindless and so forth.