The Falklands War

(N.B.: I heard about the following story from two different people who were there.)

You may recall that in 1982, the British and the Argies had a little dispute with guns over the issue of who owned the Falkland Islands. The fighting was in the second quarter of the year.

Anyway, a certain admiral and his staff were being being briefed on the status of the conflict. All dialogue is, um, "reconstructed".

Briefer: The British really need to get cracking so that they aren't fighting a war at sea in the depths of a South Atlantic winter.

Admiral: What do you mean? Summer is coming.

At this point, the staffies looked at each other nervously.

Briefer: Admiral, the war is being fought in the southern hemisphere. It'll be winter there, not summer.

Admiral: I didn't know that! Why wasn't I briefed on that? [Turning to the Chief of Staff] Did you know this?

COS: Yes, sir, I did.

Admiral: When did you learn about this?

COS: Fourth grade geography class, sir.

Admiral [turning his attention back to the briefer] When did you learn about this?

Briefer: Fifth grade, sir.

At this point, a somewhat dim light bulb illuminated in the admiral's brain, for he instructed the briefer to resume his briefing.

Happy Thanksgiving

It's been 39 years since the Thanksgiving described in this post.

Read the POD closely. Note that there is an officer designated as the CDO, or "Command Duty Officer". That might seem odd, given that the ship was at sea. But if there was a security alert, the CDO was the one who would go around to all of the guarded stations and personally tell them to secure upon his passing the word over the 1MC.

Secondly, note the name of the CDO. That was this guy. He was probably on the CNO track until he got embroiled in this mess.

Diesel Showers

Refueling at sea was an interesting maneuver. Two ships would steam about 125' or so apart, lines would be shot over, then bigger lines pulled until a steel spanwire was hooked up. Then the refueling hose, capped with a probe, would be pulled aboard to hook up so that fuel, a lot of fuel, could be pumped aboard.

How much fuel, you might ask? Tens of thousands of gallons, at a minimum. Large ships had double-receiving stations, so two probes would be hauled aboard at once. Smaller ships, if they needed a lot of fuel, could take them at two fore-and-aft stations.

Besides the deck folks, this took a lot of people. Each tank was monitored by a sailor with sounding tapes. Sailors manned valve manifolds to direct the fuel. It was best to take fuel into a number of tanks at a time, because if too much fuel was directed into a single tank at a time, it could fill too rapidly and then bad shit could happen.

One of the lesser things in the "bad shit could happen" would be if the probe of the oiler or the drogue basket on the receiving ship were worn a bit. See, the sailors pulling the probe and hoses aboard had to slam them with some force into the basket for the probe's latches to snap into place, but not so hard as to damage things. If the probe popped out, the valve in the nose of the probe would slam shut, but the probe coming out would still spray DFM (Distillate Fuel Marine, basically diesel) all over everyone on the refueling station. Do that a few times and the sailors on the downwind side wold be soaked with DFM.

In the greater of the "bad shit" would be if so much fuel was directed into one tank so that the tank overpressurized. Since the tanks were generally surrounded by other tanks that were also laden with fuel, the weakest point was to the side of the tank with air on the other side. Which was the top. in one instance, what was above was a berthing compartment of radiomen and operations specialists (radarmen). They usually worked and lived in air-conditioned comfort, they were not at all amused to have their compartment sprayed with DFM.

The third group of sailors who almost always smelled of diesel were the sailors on non-nuclear submarines, or diesel boats. Even ashore, they smelled as though they'd bathed in the stuff.

Two-Whistle Passage

A submarine stands out to sea while a ferry comes into port:

The small craft at the stern of the ferry is one of the armed security boats that escort subs in and out of port. Because terrorism.