I write today about the Navy learning a lesson (the hard way, how else?) that The DrsC learned in the 1970s and 80s. First about the Navy.
Some few years ago the Navy decided to build a series of small ships called the Littoral Combat Ships. The underlying idea of these was that they would be flexible platforms which could be reconfigured to do basically four different missions - surface warfare, anti-submarine, mine countermeasures, and irregular warfare - depending on which portable mission modules were installed on a particular vessel.
It turned out the ship that “could do everything” did nothing well enough to be useful. The order for many ships was cut, and now the Navy is scrapping the first four they received. In their place the Navy is ordering a proven design with more armor, more weapons, and fewer options, a real (if small) warship.
What is the lesson? Something that supposedly can do many things does none of them as well as a system that is specifically designed to do only one thing. The compromises required to do several different things degrades the performance of any one of them.
How did the DrsC learn this lesson the hard way? In 1972, as two teachers with summers off and before we owned a house, we bought a small motorhome. It was a 21 ft. Chinook Class C based on a Dodge van engine, frame and front end. We kept it for 11 years, drove it all over North America including to Alaska, and had a great time doing so even though many aspects of it were a pain in the backside.
The sofa was also the bed as well as where we sat to eat meals. The only part of that it did well was sofa. It backed up to the kitchen counter and when unfolded to a bed, we slept with our legs under the counter. When you rolled over in bed you often painfully kicked the bottom of the silverware drawer or the gooseneck under the sink. If one wanted to go to bed and the other wasn’t sleepy, both couldn’t be accommodated. The mattress wasn’t comfortable and the person who slept next to the wall had to climb over the other person to use the toilet.
Since this is a family blog, I won’t detail the compromises involved in a shower stall containing a fold-down toilet. Use your imagination to see how impractical a fold-down toilet is, or what happens when you forget to remove the TP when showering.
After 11 years, a new radiator, five (!) valve jobs, and about 150,000 miles, we traded the motorhome on a modest 5th wheel trailer which had a dinette, a dedicated bed and a real bathroom with separate shower and toilet. We bought a new pickup to pull it. Talk about a much improved experience of RVing, wow! Night and day. An actual bed, a real table instead of a folding one, a toilet that worked properly - man, oh, man. And we had room for a TV. Everything had one purpose and did it well. Lesson learned.
