PrOOne - OK, fair cop. I plead journalistic licence, or something like that. The point that I was trying to make to the totally insufferable West Coast and the brain dead Sidman, was that they were late to the party.
Last year when the USS Constellation was in port on its way back home from the Gulf, I was given a personal conducted tour by a Lt Cdr and two Lts that we had hosted for a couple of days. Thoroughly nice set of blokes and we had a great time. However, when we left the ship through the official 'front door' there was a pic of the Conny doing replenishment at sea (RAS) and this guy went on about how the US Navy were the only navy able to do this wonderful thing.
I resisted the temptation to tell him that the RN, RAN (and other Navies) did it regularly; that the UK invented the angle deck, the steam catapult, the mirror landing system, jet engine etc etc etc.
With such a myopic view of the world it is perhaps not surprising that WC and Sidman got upset. They probably thought it was a major achievement in the Buff crew just finding the UK
