Word: fleets
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...government of Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is planning to replace Britain's fleet of four Polaris nuclear submarines, which will become obsolete in the late 1990s, with larger and faster Trident missile subs at a cost of more than $12 billion. Owen opposes buying the U.S.-built replacements on grounds of cost and excessive dependence on Washington. At their party conference in Harrogate two weeks ago, the Social Democrats called for a coordinated European defense effort, including possible Anglo-French "collaboration" on a joint nuclear deterrent. The Liberal leadership warmly endorsed the resolution, which also urged renunciation of Britain...
...protected by the Government from competition, they had become high-cost, unionized operations. In the previous 40 years, the old Civil Aeronautics Board had received 79 applications from companies that wanted to become long-distance, interstate airlines; not one was approved. When competition was opened up in 1978, the fleet of new carriers generally employed relatively cheap nonunion labor and used smaller crews on their aircraft than established airlines did. Some upstarts, like People Express, championed pared-to-the-bone competition, in which low ticket prices took the place of almost all amenities...
During the late '60s, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt Jr. commanded the "brown-water navy," the fleet of small craft that patrolled the rivers and canals of South Viet Nam. He did such a good job that in 1970 he was appointed chief of operations for the entire U.S. Navy. Zumwalt was the right man in the wrong place at a bad time. An unpopular war was turning odious. The air was full of politics and protest; belowdecks there were racial tensions and poor morale. The admiral swept in with a mandate to give the most traditional of military services...
...liner sank instantly due to a very unfortunate blow struck by the freighter," Deputy Maritime Fleet Minister Leonid Nedyak told a press conference in Moscow less than 48 hours after the accident. "The point of impact was between the engine room and the boiler room and practically ripped the ship open." There was no time, he said, to launch lifeboats, though many of the survivors, among them Captain Markov, were able to hang on to inflatable rafts deployed from the deck...
...Santa Barbara, the Reagan Administration condemned the hijacking and ordered a Sixth Fleet aircraft carrier, the Forrestal, to proceed from Naples to the vicinity of Cyprus in the event that the Pan Am jet was flown there. Vice Admiral John Poindexter, the National Security Adviser, telephoned news of the hijacking to President Reagan at his ranch in the Santa Ynez Mountains just as the Reagans were about to set out on their daily horseback ride. Later the White House released a statement declaring, "Nothing can justify such barbarism. We can think of no punishment too severe for the criminals responsible...