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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   1385 thread views

Transnational Thursday for July 9, 2026

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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US Cmdr. Gabriel Edwards , the commander of the helicopter squadron of the USS George W. Bush, died earlier this week in the Persian Gulf, the US Navy announced Wednesday. According to official reports, Edward’s needed up missing at see when his helicopter collided with a unicorn. The collision caused Edwards to teleport fifty miles to the left, where he was lost at sea in contested Iranian waters. His death was not the result of any hostile military action. Any concurrent ceasefire violations that happened the same night as his disappearance are completely coincidental

He is survived by two children. I appreciated the United States Navy’s great candor and honesty during this difficult time for them.

In the interests of speaking plainly, I believe the Navy is lying about the circumstances about this man’s death, potentially in a way that violates federal law and the Constitution. Frankly I think the only reason they didn’t ship him back to Norfolk and claim he died of a heart attack is because they don’t have his body.

I need someone to list all the Looney Toons accidents that happened in Iraq I & II, Vietnam, Korea, WWII, etc. Because I'm starting to turn Schizo from the fact that the USA is claiming all these losses of men and material from ridiculous mishaps ("A clothes dryer caught fire and destroyed a carrier" "we landed the planes in a mud puddle on a rescue mission that just happened to be right next to the nuclear supplies we were planning to Mission Impossible" "Plane crashed in the middle of nowhere"). I'm even looking at the two recent civilian skydiving accidents a little crossways, and they happened in Missouri and France.

246 fires on aircraft carriers and big-deck amphibs over 70 years, after WWII.

"A clothes dryer caught fire and destroyed a carrier"

"Destroyed" is... a tremendously strong word. It's not like FORD went full BONHOMME RICHARD.

There's also that time the US sank one of its own subs while the thing was moored at a pier. Oh, and that time an aircraft carrier sliced the top off the cruiser USS BELKNAP. Can't recall if the cruiser was carrying nuclear cruise missiles at the time or not, but I do remember that the officer determined to be at fault had just won an award for his ship-handling skills.

And from a related branch, there was that landing craft that up and sank during training off the coast of California, killing 9 marines. Or the F-35 and refueling tanker casualty that had a botched SAR operation in very friendly waters. And I don't need to tell you of the (oft-maligned, and possibly out of context) Osprey safety record concerns...

"Destroyed" is... a tremendously strong word. It's not like FORD went full BONHOMME RICHARD.

Reports have varied, but we're looking at a return to service in 2027 on the optimistic government timeline. While "destroyed" is perhaps aggressive, "damaged sufficiently to be removed from operation" is infelicitous, and anyway we're being weirdo skeptics so we're rounding up and assuming the damage is worse than we were told.

If we were at real war, it'd be operating. But since they can very well do without it, nobody wants to take a risk, so everybody is covering their asses and crossing the t's and dotting the i's. That's very different from being "destroyed" or even substantially "damaged".

How much of that is due to the fire, and how much is standard/deferred maintenance cycles, though? I have a feeling they'd be in port close until 2027 even without the fire.

The US Navy in WWII lost quite a few ships and aircraft to typhoon storms in the Pacific. Typhoon Cobra sunk three destroyers and killed 790 sailors, but there were a few other storms too.

There’s the German U-boat that had a catastrophic toilet failure…

Okay, but early submarines really cannot be used as representative of modern(ish) naval accident rates. Those things were... well, death traps is a bit too strong of a word, but issues abounded.

Interesting that the landing craft crash happened just five days after Russian forces broke through at Mariupol....

I'm honestly unsure of what you're trying to imply here.

That the importance of a person’s martyrdom is often only visible in the light of history, and isn’t controlled by the number of tasteless bon mottes belched out by soulless haters. On April 5, 1968, it looked pretty definite that the Civil Rights movement had been killed with Dr. King. In hindsight, that is obviously not the case. We won’t know the verdict on Charlie Kirk until at least 2050.

I think you responded to the wrong comment? Charlie Kirk sure wasn't on that landing craft (although it would be an even funnier conspiracy theory...)

God damn it sorry, I had a post replying to the post in the main culture war thread discussing his Kirk’s death. I got your reply notification and thought you were asking for clarification on that.

To answer your question, There were persistent rumors that a large contingent of NATO advisors got trapped in Mariupol because the city was encircled faster than anticipated. So it’s interesting that you have a mass casualty producing event just at the right time you would need an excuse for casualties from that.

There are also rumors that Biden’s trade of Britney Griner for Viktor Bout was to secretly get back high-ranking American POWs from that battle, hence why it looked like such a hilariously unfair swap on paper.

That there is big unofficial US personnel presence on the ground in Ukraine as advisors and if you squint there is pattern where USA training accidents in conus happens soon after massive Russian missile attacks in Ukraine.

Judging by how well Ukraine's best pilot their F16s, the idea that there are people that help with stuff like Patriot at critical points is not unthinkable.

That'd have to be a lot of people in on the coverup... the other 12 landing craft and support ships/personnel involved in the exercise, the half the crew that did survive...

Technically possible, as you said, if you squint.

The US navy has something of a record of stupid crashes. The inquiry into the Fitzgerald crash in 2017 came to the conclusion that one of the contributing causes was crew fatigue due to a sustained high operational tempo. The idea that basic safety compliance collapses during combat ops making a technically non-combat crash an order of magnitude more likely seems obviously correct.

That said, if the Iranians had shot the chopper down, the Trump administration would probably lie about it. To those familiar with combat helo flying, how likely is a near miss which does enough damage to render the chopper inoperable (e.g. by taking out the tail rotor) leading to a ditching without blowing it to smithereens in mid-air?

The 1967 USS Forrestal fire is a good place to start if you want to get the idea of the sort of things that can just sort of happen by accident (21 aircraft destroyed, 40 damaged, 134 deaths).

John McCain – better known as a US Senator – was present at the fire. What's not as well known about him is that his aircraft crashed twice (due to engine trouble on both occasions, I believe) and he clipped power lines a third time, on top of being shot down.

Generally speaking my understanding is that military aviation and indeed "the military" more broadly has gotten safer as time has gone on. This might have the effect of elevating accidents when they do occur.

Don’t forget Argentina!

In all seriousness, listing incidents is just begging for a Texas sharpshooter to come and draw you a bullseye. All the usual SSC pieces about selection bias apply. Batshit insane stuff does happen occasionally. If you turn up the number of opportunities by, say, maintaining the world’s largest navy and two largest air forces, then sending them across the planet to run combat missions, you will generate more batshit insane incidents. Drawing a line through all these incidents will tell you more about the person drawing the line than about the base rate!

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