Attache

(NB: This story is at least third-hand, so I can't vouch for it.)

This is no shit:

Over forty years ago, there was a coup in Liberia. The president was reportedly murderd in his bed. Most of the senior officials were given an essentially meaningless trial and executed.

Liberia, then and now, was one of the more favored nations for flags of convenience. As an aside, all merchant ships have to be registered in one nation or another and they are supposed to operate under the rules of that nation. Liberia was somewhat rumored to have the rule that the only effective regulation was paying the fees for use of the Liberian flag.

The post-coup government of Liberia was basically a bunch of heavily armed amateurs. At one point, they discussed the matter of the Liberian-registered mechant fleet with officials from the American embassy. The Liberians announced that they planned to order every Liberian-registered ship to sail to Monrovia for inspection. One of the American officals, possibly the naval attache, said that would be a bad idea, for the ships would merely paint out "Monrovia" on their sterns, paint "Balboa" and hoist the Panamanian flag before the day was out.

The Liberians were shocked. One of them said that would be illegal.

The naval attache shrugged and observed that it was also illegal to shoot the president.

That argument carried the day.

The Suez Canal

(This is all from memory. Any difference between what I remember and how things are is what it is. Suck it up.)

You've probably read about the M/V Ever Given getting stuck in the Suzed Canal just north of the Red Sea.

The Suez Canal was closed for eight years following the Six Day War, both by ships and bridges destroyed and by mines. Several ships were stuck there (the Yellow Fleet). After the Yom Kippur War, by international agreement, the wreckage and mines were cleared and the Canal was reopened. The first convoy through was largely ceremonial. By tradition, transiting warships lead every convoy. For the ceremonial convoy, the first ship was an Egyptian destroyer. The second ship was the heavy cruiser USS Little Rock, which was a bit of a shock to the Soviet Navy officers there. The USSR regarded Egypt as a near-client state, but it hadn't been the Russians who cleared the Canal of ordnance. When a reporter asked a Russian officer the name of the American warship, he said "the USS Surprise".

Convoys, led by any transiting warhip(s), assemble off Port Said in the Med and Port Suez in the Red Sea. The southbound convoy starts first and sails through the northern part of the canal to the Great Bitter Lake. That convoy anchors there for several hours while the northbound convoy passes by. Then the southbound convoy weighs anchor and finishes the transit.

So this is no shit:

There was an American warship which was transiting south. The first thing that went wrong was that the Captain got confused as to when the ship should enter the Canal. The entrance to the Canal at Port Said was lined with stone seawalls that extended about three miles into the Med. The ship entered the entrance and was ordered to get the fuck back out, as the northbound convoy was approaching. Turning around in that narrow channel was an interesting evolution. On the seawall was a shack that had guards or maybe the Canal pilots. As the ship jockeyed to turn around, the bow of the ship came very close to the guardshack, to the point that the men inside ran down the seawall.

The warship went back out into the Med, the Captain fuming away. Once everything got going, the pilot boarded, along with an electrician. A light had to be mounted to the bow that projected two beams of white light, one to each side. The electrican oversaw the installation by the ship's electrican's mates, then he was escorted to the mess decks, where he spent the transit eating and smoking. Following the electrician were two line-handlers. The Captain had a conniption fit, but the pilot told him that the line-handlers were part of the package. They also spent the transit smoking and eating. Both the electrician and the line handlers were guarded for the entire time they were aboard.

The ship led the convoy down to the Great Bitter Lake at a blistering speed of maybe eight knots. The transit started during the night. As the sun rose, the crew gawked at the wreckage of two wars which lined the Canal. There were wrecked tanks and antiaircraft guns.

When the convoy reached the Great Bitter Lake, all of the ships in the convoy anchored and waited for the northbound convoy sail by. Most of the Bridge crew immediately headed for their racks to get some sleep. Once the other convoy passed, the southbound convoy got underway and finished the transit. At the mouth of the Canal, a boat came by to collect the pilot, the electrian (and his light) and the line-handlers (all of whom left with packs of cigarettes stuffed in their pockets).

The northbound transit, some time later, was like a walk in the park. The attitude was "ok, just another canal transit."

Life in the Yards

(Inspired by the fire aboard the USS Bonhomme Richard)

I've been through one major overhaul, a few SRAs (Shipyard Repair Availabilities) and numerous shorter maintenance periods, which were called "Tender Availabilities", even if there was no destroyer tender involved.

The most challenging is a major overhaul. The ship is in drydock, so in the summer, it is hotter than a baked motherfucker in the ship and, in the winter, it is colder than a carport outside of an igloo. The shipyard workers have little to no respect for the ship. Trash and debris accumulate everywhere if the ship's force isn't driven to be diligent. That's a tall order, as it's hard to motivate the sailors to keep cleaning up other people's shit. Usually the motivation has to devolve into unrelenting harshness, which means that's a job for the XO.

When there is welding or cutting going on, there have to be fire watches, which is usually a task for the ship's crew. The sailor so detailed gets to stand around with a fire extinguisher and watch the yardbird work. If the work is being done to a bulkhead, deck or overhead, then there has to be a fire watch on the other side. If the work is at a corner, then there can be more than one space on the "other side" of the work and all of them have to have a fire watch.

This is in addition to any repair or maintenance work that the repair plan assigned to the ship's force to do. If money is tight, a lot of that work is assigned to ship's force. While this is going on, a lot of the crew may be away, attending training classes (individually or in teams) or sucked away on temporary duty to another ship. There's not much in the way of fun, there's no time at sea, no port visits, just day-to-day life in a dirty industrial environment.

Add to that the security issue: The yardbirds steal anything that is not locked up or welded down. A sailor who leaves his tools at his or her workside to go to the head or catch a smoke will often come back to find all of the tools, if not the entire tool box, has been stolen. The sailors can start treating the yard workers like a pack of unarrested criminals, which also does a number of morale.

One day in the yards, I was the Command Duty Officer. I was making my rounds and opened a door to step out onto the weatherdeck on the 01 level. It was full dark, the lighting wasn't great, and I almost tripped over some piping that some fucking sandcrab left lying on the deck. If I had tripped, it would have thrown me up against the lifelines, which were of a temporary nature, and would probably have resulted in my fall to the bottom of the dry dock, which would have been at least a sixty-foot drop onto the steel floor of the dock. In other words, it would have been fatal.

I was enraged. I threw the piping over the side and down into the drydock. Then I went around the weatherdecks and threw every other obstruction that was not properly marked or guarded (that I could lift) into the drydock.

The next morning, I told the XO what I had done. He wasn't amused, but he got the idea that I didn't much care. The yardbirds were not at all happy and complained to their bosses, who complained to the CO. The CO promised an investigation, which of course, went nowhere.

Confusion to the Enemy

Back around the mid-1980s, the USS Josephus Daniels (CG-27) was preparing to deploy to the Med. As some exercises were going to be held on the way, the Operations Officer thought it might be fun to repaint the hull number to CG-28, which was that of the USS Wainwright. There was zero chance of the two ships being seen together; the Daniels was homeported in Norfolk, VA, the Wainwright in Charleston, SC. A few months after the Daniels deployed, the Wainwright went to the Persian Gulf.

Initially, the confusion was limited to a couple of new sailors, who were wandering around the piers, looking for a big gray warship with the number 27 painted on her bows. Most looked at the white Herculite banner lashed to the gangplank that said "USS Josephus Daniels", but one went to the Shore Patrol and was directed unceremoniously to the ship.

A few weeks later, the Daniels was in an exercise. A submarine got within torpedo range, popped off a green flare to signal firing one, then sent out a target message giving its position and claiming a kill on the Wainwright. The Wainwright responded with a message of her own, giving her position, noting that it was a few thousand miles away, and expressed wonder at the fantastic torpedoes subs now had.

Much hilarity ensued.

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.

The Inspection From Hell

This is no shit:

A few months before this incident, the same ship was visiting another port. Each month, the captain of a ship was supposed to hold an inspection. It could be a zone inspection (working spaces), a messing and berthing inspection, or a personnel inspection.

This particular time, the captain chose to hold a messing and berthing inspection. He started aft at 0900. Farthest aft was Airdale Berthing (the ship had an embarked helo detachment). That was fine.

Next up was the After Head, used by the sailors in Engineering and Aviation Departments. The captain ran his finger under the rim of the toilet bowls to check for a buildup of scum. What he found was some enterprising sailor had packed fecal material under the rim of one of the toilets.

The captain's rage was towering. He went into Engineering Berthing and, basically, tore the place apart. He flipped the mattresses from every bunk on the pretext of looking for contraband. He yanked the sheets from every mattress to see if the mattress was stained. He did the same to every pillow. He was in there for hours. (It seemed longer.)

Next up was the Mess Deck and it got similar treatment. The turmoil was such that the cooks served sandwiches for lunch instead of a planned hot meal with a selection of two main courses. The captain was a little more restrained when he got to the Goat Locker, but not by much. Then it was the turn of Supply Berthing, which got almost the same treatment as the Engineers did.

The Forward Head was immaculate, as everyone knew what was going on. Weapons and Operations flooded the place with sailors to make sure that the head was clean enough for doing brain surgery. Try as he might, the captain could only find a little dust in a conduit bundle.

The scary thing was it had now been ten hours since the Shitter Incident and the captain was still in a full-blown rage. it was one thing to be angry, but he was acting as though somebody had shot his dog and then rubbed the carcass in his face. He truly was, at that moment, insane.

Liberty had been secured for the day. At 2000, the XO persuaded the captain to end the inspection for the day, to resume the next day. The XO called the department heads together and told them that the inspection would resume at 0900 the following day, with the uninspected areas up first, then a reinspection of the unsat areas (everything else).

And yes, there were areas that had not been inspected. The inspection of the berthing compartments for Weapons and Operations took five minutes each. Inspection of Officers' Country took ten minutes, including the Wardroom Galley (the captain basically glanced into each stateroom). The reinspection of every other area took about five minutes apiece. The captain made the XO run his finger under the rims of the toilet bowls in the After Head.

Nobody was stupid enough to try a repeat. And just to be sure, the engineering chiefs personally had checked each toilet.

Why the Chaplain was Scum

I mentioned this awhile back. This is no shit:

There was a sailor on one ship who was a pretty nice guy. He was pleasant to everyone, he worked hard and he was just a joy to stand watch with.

He got out and went to school. He was going to a junior college to get an associate's degree before going on for his batchelor's degree. He was doing that while working full time in a convenience store, of the kind that Tam has referred to as a "Stop `n Rob".

Only this time, a couple of years after he had left the Navy, it was no joke. The robbers thought it best to kill the witness, being the former sailor who was working that late shift.[1]

Word got back to the ship, which was deployed aboard. The Horrible Chaplain was riding the ship. A memorial service was arranged for a Sunday afternoon on the mess deck, the largest open space available. It was very well attended. Sailors who were on watch who were on board before the kid got got out were arranging swaps to attend.

So the chaplain gets up, goes to the little podium/altar and says: "Well, let's get this over with." He may have thought he said it quietly, but he was overheard by those closest to the altar.

Word spread through the ship faster than anything short of primer-cord. The reaction was not one of amusement.

The XO quietly advised the chaplain that, for his personal safety, he'd best not be found outside of Officers Country after the word was passed to "darken ship".

He followed that advice.

More's the pity.
_______________________________
[1] The robbers' score for the jobs they pulled as probably less than the bail for a shoplifting charge. They were caught. One ratted, the others went to Death Row. At least one lived long enough to be executed.

Crackback

This is no shit:

So there were a bunch of officers from one ship that were at a pool (as in "swimming") party. There was a lot of drinking going on. The captain was rather soused. He was running around the edge of the pool, pushing people in.

This captain was one I've written about before. He was a jerk.

It was a hot summer evening. The Sun had set and it was getting dark. People were swimming and trying to stay out of the way of the captain, who had some fixation about throwing people into the pool.

The deck of the pool went up to the house. There were a few young officers sitting on the few steps into the house, enjoying their drinks and trying like hell to stay out of the captain's way.

One of them was an ensign This guy was pretty quiet, but he was a bit, shall we say, unconventional. Intelligence and aptitude were the only things that kept him from being a problem child due to attitudinal issues. One of his problems was that he often did things without mulling them through. You might have heard of the old excuse "it seemed like a good idea at the time." His percentage of ideas that were good ones was very high.

So anyway, there's the captain, running around the pool. He went past the guys on the steps. When his back was somewhat to them, the ensign exploded out of a sitting position, crossed the pool deck and hit the captain in the back with a vicious block, flinging the captain into the pool.

By the time the captain came up and broke the surface of the water, the ensign was seated back on the steps, holding his drink. If you hadn't seen it, you'd not have known that he had moved a centimeter.

Pretty much everybody other than the captain, including the XO, had seen it.

Nobody said nothing.

Sky Pilots

"Sky pilots" is an old slang term for members of the military chaplain corps.

Chaplains were usually received direct commissions and were sent to Officer Indoctrination School. They berthed on the upper floor of King Hall in Newport, RI, over the floors assigned to OCS. OIS was pretty funny, as the students there marched in formation. They wore the ranks that they were commissioned into, ranging from ensigns to lieutenant commanders. When they marched, whoever was ordering the formation about (slang term was "driver") was under orders to salute all officers. It usually boggled the minds of the ensigns at Baby SWOS to receive salutes from lieutenants and lieutenant commanders, but that's the way it was.

Chaplains afloat were found on ships the size of cruisers and above, including tenders. They had one or two sailors to assist them, who were yeomen or personnelmen with the sub-designation of "chaplain's assistant". They got their own rate of "religious personnelman" (RP) in the late `70s, then became "religious programs specialist", or some shit like that. Navy chaplains also served the Marine Corps.

Chaplains weren't assigned to frigates and destroyers. Sometimes, a deploying task group would have a chaplain assigned to minister to all of the tin cans. That chaplain was supposed to spend a month or on each ship. On Sundays, if nothing overly intensive was going on, the chaplain would be ferried from ship to ship by the "Holy Helo", often a SH-2 or SH-3 that was on one of those ships. Those helo-ridering chaplains were typically sent out without RPs.

Chaplains were supposed to minister to all comers. Which meant that if there were a few Jews on a ship and Passover was coming up, it was the chaplain's job to make it happen. On smaller ships without a chaplain, the senior person of each faith was given the collateral job of "lay religious leader" for that faith.

This is no shit: I was the Jewish lay leader for a ship. I was the only Jew aboard. So I had the word passed that "Services for the Jewish Sabbath will be held in Main Control." The XO went batshit. The CO thought it was funny.

This is also no shit: One of the helo-riding chaplains was such a worthless piece of shit that the first ship to host him got stuck with him, as none of the other ships would take him. Nobody on the first ship was very pleased about that. But they had to suck it up.

That ship was in port in Naples, Italy one fine summer afternoon. The chaplain was given a teletype radio message with his next set of orders. The orders were to the Marine Recruit Training Center in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

He was not pleased by the orders. He was less pleased at lunchtime when he walked into the wardroom; every officer stood up and began singing the Marine Corps Hymn.

The chaplain went to the navy base early the following morning to place a call to Washington to talk to his detailer. The detailer told him that the orders would not be changed, and that if he wanted to resign his commission, he was free to do so. The story was that he'd talk to his superiors in the church hierarchy, and was told that if he did resign his commission, he would be sent to a church that would make Camp Lejeune looks like New York City, in comparison.

He accepted his orders. Nobody that I knew of ever saw him again. We assumed that he was fragged and dumped in the swamp, somewhere.

Which was fine with everyone, for reasons that I'll tell another time.

Pollution, Pollution

First, read this.

The Navy was quite serious about all that: If a ship pumped oil into the inland waters of the U.S., the chief engineer could expect to pay a honking steep fine. They also were sensitive about doing it near other countries.

So anyway, there was a DDG in port in Miami or Port Everglades. There was water in the bilges that had an oily sheen. The ship arranged for a tanker truck and began to pump out the bilges. It was a slow process.

One of the boiler chief petty officers got impatient. So around 0300 or so, he lit off the bilge eductor pump and pumped the bilges over the side. Then he had the other pump secured and the hoses stowed.

The Chief Engineer came down into the spaces just after Quarters. He saw that the bilges were dry. Now, this particular CHENG wasn't a dummy. He knew about what the level of the bilges was and how fast the pump to the truck was working. He knew that there was no way in hell that the bilges should be dry, for the pump had quite a bit of head and it wasn't at all efficient.

So he went looking for answers. He got them. He next went looking for the chief with blood in his eye. He pulled the chief into the Oil Lab, ordered everyone else to leave the space, shut the door and asked the "what the fuck" question. The chief shrugged it off and pointed out that the bilges had to be pumped before lighting fires and that the pump to the truck wasn't going to get it done. The Engineer asked if the chief had noticed that there was a motherfucking Coast Guard station on the other side of the harbor, if the chief was aware that the fines for intentionally discharging oily waste into an inland waterway were between $25,000 and $50,000 and that as the ship's engineer, that the Engineer would be dinged for that whether or not he had given orders for it or even had known about it. (Supposedly nearly every third word was either "fuck" or a variant thereof, so the question took a little longer to ask.)

The boiler technician chief said that he hadn't thought about that.

The Engineer then looked straight at him and said something along the lines of that he (Engineer) wouldn't have to pay it, because if it came to that, he was going to shoot the chief and "they can't make you pay no fines while you're in prison."

The destroyer left port the next morning. The Coast Guard never found out. And the boiler chief petty officer was real careful not to piss off the Engineer.

Imaginative Ensigns

So there was a ship in the Med, a Garcia-class FF. Its SPS-10 surface search radar was out of commission (before the navy began installing LN-66 radars on ships). That meant that the Officer of the Deck had to eyeball the closest point of approach (CPA) for surface contacts. He wasn't terribly comfortable with that and he was probably a bit annoyed that the guys in CIC basically got to do nothing all watch.

So he came up with the idea of using the gunfire radar to ping the range of contacts. A sailor from 2nd Division was installed up in the director. He would train the radar on a visual contact and get the range. With the range input from the radar and the bearing information from the lookouts (or maybe from the radar, as well), CIC could then compute things such as the course and speed of the contact and the CPA for each contact.

That worked well. Until it didn't.

It stopped being a good idea when one of the surface contacts was a Soviet AGI.

Under the 1972 Prevention of Incidents at Sea Treaty between the USA and the USSR, one of the things that was prohibited was "simulating attacks" on the other party's ships. For all the gibbering by the various politicians of how the Russians never honor agreements, the Soviet navy was pretty goddamn scrupulous about honoring that one. Officers of ships deploying overseas were exhorted to have a firm understanding of the provisions of the treaty, because the Russians did.

The Soviets took a dim view of "painting" their ships with fire-control radar; they viewed that as a simulated attack. The Soviet ship's captain (or someone who spoke English) got on the "Bridge-to-Bridge" radio circuit and complained about the alleged treaty violation. Then he reported the incident. A few days later, the frigate's captain had to do a "rug dance" by radio teletype message, about why his command was so cavalier about obeying the provisions of the treaty.

And you know the direction that shit flows.

The OOD was "counseled" to run all of his future "good ideas" by the Senior Watch Officer or the XO for approval before implementing them.

Cumshaw

Cumshaw was, basically, anything that was obtained outside of normal channels, whether repair work done without a 2-Kilo or stuff that was obtained without a supply chit.

And it could be almost any way imaginable.

This is no shit:

A young lieutenant junior grade was standing watch as the Command Duty Officer of a ship that had just entered drydock a few days previously. A sister ship was also in the shipyard, getting ready to sail on sea trials. A lieutenant and four sailors came onto the quarterdeck from the second ship well after evening chow and asked to speak to the CDO. When the CDO appeared, the lieutenant pronounced that he was there to take one of the legs to the forward kingpost.

The kingpost was a gizmo that was erected on the forecastle during an underway replenishment. The spanwire from the cargo ship would be connected to it. The bottom of the kingpost bolted to a heavy baxter bolt. The outboard side of the top of the kingpost connected to two legs, which in turn were bolted to baxter bolts in the deck. The kingpost and its legs were made of heavy and high-grade aluminum piping.

All of those parts were original issue to the ships. Replacements were scarcer than honest politicians (and almost as expensive as crooked ones). For whatever reason, the soon-to-sail ship was missing one. It would be a serious ding to not be able to take on supplies at both unrep stations.

The CDO stroked his chin and said: "I don't know anything about you taking the kingpost leg. Nobody told me about this."

The lieutenant said that it was all arranged between the two ship's Weapons Officers and that he needed it, now.

The CDO asked when it had been arranged and he was told "two days ago, I think."

The CDO looked quizzical and said: "I have a tough decision to make, sir. Maybe you can help me."

Now the lieutenant looked puzzled: "If I can."

"Weps is on TDY at a school. So your Weps would have had to talk to our acting Weps. Which is me. And I've not talked to anybody about this. So this is my dilemma: Either I shoot you or arrest you for attempted theft. If you're not offa my fucking ship in ten seconds, I'm gonna choose one or the other." He then turned to the Petty Officer of the Watch and said: "Gimme your sidearm and a magazine."

The lieutenant and his men got off the ship as fast as they could throw out the required salutes.

Pee-Tee

The Navy has PT standards.

It once wasn't that way. Physical fitness was generally ignored or given short shrift, like small arms training. Sailors were supposed to be fit enough to do their jobs and if they weren't, that's what evaluations were for. There really wasn't a height and weight standard, other than for sea-going sailors, who were supposed to be able to fit through a 18" scuttle.

There was one sailor on my first ship who was pretty damned obese. The XO told him that if he became too fat to fit through a scuttle, that he'd be medically discharged. So the sailor went on an eating program to get that fat. When he got too fat to get through a scuttle, the XO didn't have him discharged. The sailor was bitterly disappointed and felt that the XO had broken a promise.

That began to change in the mid-`80s. An annual PT test was ordered into effect. First-class petty officers had to submit full-body photos of them, standing sideways, against a contrasting background, because the Navy had gotten tired of making chiefs out of fat-assed PO1s. They might still end up sitting in the Goat Locker on the ROAD program, but not because they were too fat.

The initial reaction from the Fleet was basically one of: "OK, get into shape, but do it on yer own goddamned time." I can recall one (count it) one command PT session on two ships. A command PT session took a hell of a lot of time, from changing out of the work uniform into PT gear, going to the exercise field (not enough room on most ships for this), warming up, doing the exercises, ending with a run, then going back to the ship, taking a shower (for the office pukes, anyway) and then getting back into the working uniform.

Other than the command PT coordinator (if there was one) and maybe the XO, everyone hated it. It took too much time out of the work day on ships that really needed a 30-hour day to get done what needed to be done (except for the Ops pukes and most of the Pork Chops, that is). So command PT was seen being done by those commands that had the time: Airdales and shore pukes.

I don't imagine that things have changed overly much.

Harassing the FNGs

I was in the store and saw this in the sporting goods/boating section:

That was one of the common things to do to a FNG (fucking new guy) was to send him for fifty feet of shore line or water line. Another was to tell a guy to go get a bucket of prop wash from the fire room. The boiler techs would tell the FNG that they were fresh out and send him elsewhere. A common one in Charleston was to send a guy looking for the mast crank so that they could lower the ship's uppermost mast before passing under the Cooper River Bridge.

On some ships, the harassment of FNGs got into the kind of hazing that, in time of war, are called "atrocities". A couple skippers and command master chiefs were fired over that.

This is no shit: On one ship, there were some gunner's mates doing some maintenance on the after 5" mount. One of the junior petty officers told a FNG that they were fresh out of relative bearing grease and that the FNG should go to the forward fire room and get a tube of it. The kid did. The boiler techs grabbed the FNG, rubbed grease in his hair and on his face and sent him back to the gun mount.

The XO found out about it and did some ass-chewing of the Weapons Officer and the Chief Engineer. The truth of the old saying that "shit flows downhill" was demonstrated to all concerned.

About six months later, the same petty officer told the same kid to go down to the fire room and get a tube of true bearing grease. The FNG said: "There ain't no such thing as true bearing grease." The petty officer said: "Yes, there is, it comes in a tube like this" and held up a tube of DC-4. The FNG said: "Oh, OK."

Off he went to the fire room. The boiler techs told him to get the fuck out. They told their chief, who passed the word up to the Chief Engineer. Who then informed the Weapons Officer.

About three weeks later, the Weapons Department had to send four sailors mess cranking. A certain junior petty officer was one of them. He was made to understand that the alternative was to be taken to Captain's Mast, where he would be busted down to seaman, have half of his pay taken away for two months, be restricted to the ship for 45 days, get 45 days of extra duty and be sent cranking on top of all that.

Dreaming On

This is no shit: I had this dream several nights ago:

Time: Far into the future.

Place: Aboard an unnamed DDG, far out at sea.

One of my nephews/nieces is an officer on the ship. The ship was doing a Tiger Cruise on the way back from her deployment. I was invited to go and I did. My relative had proudly informed the rest of the wardroom, before I got there, that I had been an engineer back in the steam Navy.

So one day, the XO pulls me aside and says: "Look, the Captain wants to hold an all-officers meeting tomorrow morning. You're OOD qualified, right? We're independent steaming, do you mind taking the watch for an hour or so?"

I allowed that while yes, I had been OOD qualified, I knew nothing of the ship. But she assured me that she'd personally make sure that the enlisted Bridge and CIC watchstanders for my watch would be the best-of-the-best. And I should feel free to go spend some time on the Bridge to get familiar with things.

Of course, the Bridge was, to my old eyes, a confusing array of computerized gear. Hell, the helmsman sat at a console, which was heresy back in my day.

On the appointed morning, I went up there, only to find out that I was going to have both the Deck and the Conn. No big deal, independent steaming, and no planned course changes for three days. I took the watch and mostly tried to amuse myself by having the Quartermaster of the Watch show me how all of the computerized shit really worked.

Two hours into the watch, the word came up: "Man overboard, port side!"

I yelled out: "Left full rudder, all ahead Flank II, set maneuvering combination! Combat, Bridge, mark position! Boats, pass the word: 'Man overboard, man the boats. All hands not involved to quarters, submit muster reports to the XO on the Bridge.'" The ship by then had turned about fifty degrees off its original course, I ordered: "Shift your rudder!" Then, "Boats, pass the word: 'Commanding Officer, your presence is requested on the Bridge.'"

All over the ship, there was the sounds of doors slamming and people moving around. Combat was feeding up range and direction to the spot they marked. As the ship came around, I ordered the helmsman to steady up on the reciprocal bearing and to reduce speed to 2/3rds. I was out on starboard bridge-wing, I could see the smoke from the float thrown overboard by the After Lookout and I tried to guess how this gas-turbine pig would handle when she came closer.

That's when I heard some applause from inside the Bridge. The Captain, XO and some of the other officers were there, smiling. The XO passed the word to secure from man overboard stations.

The Captain said: "Nice job. 50 years later, you still got it."

The first word through my mind was: "Asshole".

Given that it has been so long since I last was on a Navy ship, I have to wonder why that dream came up.

Oh, the Horrors of Being in the Air Force!

Posters! Signs with "unprofessional language"! Displays of "historical nose art"! R-rated movies!

What a bunch of drone-driving pussies.

This is no shit: I knew of a ship that was moored abreast to and outboard of another nation's warship in a foreign port. The ships were part of a small NATO task group, they were operating together for a few months.

The inboard nation's ship was holding a reception for local dignitaries on its forecastle. The captain of the USN ship ordered his Command Duty Officer to keep sailors from the forecastle of the USN ship during the duration of the event.

The CDO thought on how to do that without posting guards. His solution was to take some blank copy paper and tape four sheets together to make one large sign. On the sign, with a heavy black marker, he printed these words:

Stay the Fuck Off the Forecastle!

and he signed the sign as CDO. He posted one such sign on each door onto the forecastle and put smaller signs on the hatches going up to the forecastle.

Nobody went on the forecastle. Even the armed security watch, which was supposed to check all deck areas, requested his permission to go onto the forecastle.

But clearly, that young officer would be in a world of shit in today's Air Force. If you can even use the word "shit" in the Air Force.

(H/T)

Fo'c'sle, Bridge, Breaker, Breaker, One Nine

In an earlier post on anchoring, I alluded to a sound-powered phone circuit between the Bridge and the Forecastle. Sound-powered phones are telephones designed to take their power from the energy of the incoming sound waves. While the handsets and headsets had receivers and transmitters, they were really bidirectional in that you could, if you wanted to, listen and talk over the same unit.

The advantage of sound-powered phones was that they were dirt-simple and they didn't require power. All you had to do was string two wires and hook a handset up at each end. For example, as part of the rigging lines between ships during underway replenishment, two sound-powered phone lines were sent across to the two ships could talk Bridge-to-Bridge and Unrep Station to Unrep Station.

All installed circuits were designated with at least two letters[1] and then maybe numbers. For this post, I am focusing on the maneuvering circuit, the 1JV. In open-ocean steaming, the 1JV connected the Bridge, Main Control and the After Lookout. On the Bridge, the Lee Helmsman served as the phone talker; in Main Control, the Throttleman did.

Coming in and out of port, there would be more stations on the 1JV. For mooring alongside a pier or another ship, the Forecastle would be on the line, while the After Lookout served as the phone talker for the Fantail line handlers. If boats were to be operated, the boat davit stations had phone talkers.

Communications could be slow. The Conning Officer would give an order, such as "Foc's'le, Bridge, slack Line One." The sailor on the Lee Helm would repeat the order, verbatim, and the phone talker on the Forecastle would shout it out. The officer/chief/petty officer in charge would yell back: "Slack Line One, Foc's'le, Aye!" and that would be repeated back up the phone circuit. And if you had a couple of sailors as phone-talkers who were not exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer, it could be a real clusterfuck with lots of "say again" responses.

Back in the `70s, during the CB radio craze, a number of CB walkie-talkies began to hit the consumer market. Ships bought them, figuring that the Conning Officer (or the Captain) could then talk directly to the person in charge of the Forecastle and/or the Fantail. All it took was to find an unused channel[2] and use that. It was believed that as long nobody said their ship's name, that using the CB radios didn't compromise operational security.

This is no shit: A destroyer was steaming into the naval station at Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico. The ship was heading for an anchorage, and, like a lot of ships, they were using walkie-talkies. When the ship was at the right spot to drop the anchor, the Conning Officer keyed his walkie-talkie and radioed: "Foc's'le, Bridge, let go the anchor!"

That command was heard on two ships. The other ship was an oiler that was heading down the channel at Roosevelt Roads at ten knots. The Bo'sun's Mate on the Forecastle of that ship keyed his radio and yelled: "Let go the anchor, Foc's'le, Aye!" At that command, the sailor holding the sledgehammer at the pelican hook swung the hammer, knocked it free and all hell broke loose.

Fortunately, there were no injuries and nothing serious was broken. But an order went out from the type commanders, in very short order, outlawing the use of CB radios aboard ships.
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[1] All included the letter "J", designating the circuit to be sound-powered.
[2] Not 9, the emergency channel or 19, most commonly used by truckers

Helpful Guidance From the Afloat Staff

This is no shit[1]:

There was a task group of warships heading into Yokosuka, Japan. One of the double-ended cruisers had had a boiler casualty and was sort of limping in on one screw. The demineralizer in one of the plants had failed and, instead of removing minerals from the condensate coming from the main engine, had dumped minerals into the feed water system. That salts up a boiler faster than you can think of it.

Besides replacing the resin guts in the demineralizer, the affected plant has to be washed out with copious amounts of fresh water, then rinsed with a citric-acid based wash, and then rinsed again. It was that cruiser's dumb luck that she was steaming all four boilers at the time, which meant that both boilers in the affected plant had to be opened up and cleaned.

After the engineers had stopped steaming the salted-up plant, the Chief Engineer recommended to the Captain that he place the ship on water hours. "Water hours" meant that unless you were a cook or you were covered in grease and oil, you didn't get to take a shower. And you might as well wear the same uniform for awhile, as the ship's laundry was also secured. It didn't take very long until the inside of the ship smelled like a locker room.

The plan that the Engineer recommended to the Captain was to do all of the flushing of the salted boilers at sea, so that they wouldn't have to worry about disposing of the water used to flush the boilers.[2] Once in port, where a Culligan truck was available, they would then close out the boilers and hydrostatically test them.[3]

All of this, of course, was the subject of a CASREP and follow-on updates. So nobody could say that anyone in the staffs wasn't informed.

So now it's a little after 2300, two days before the task group is to arrive. One of the bright young lads on the embarked staff on the aircraft carrier got on the secure UHF circuit[4], called over to the cruiser and asked to speak to the Engineer. CIC called down to Engineering. The EOOW called the Engineer in his stateroom and told him that he was wanted on the Red Phone.

The Engineer was not happy. It seemed as though he was going to be able to get a good six hours' of uninterrupted rack time, which was almost unheard-of. So he pulled on his filthy uniform and went up to Combat. The CICWO pointed to the correct handset. The Engineer picked it up. The conversation went about like this:

"Staff, Cruiser, Chief Engineer speaking. Over."

"Staff here. Due to the sensitivity surrounding discharges from warships, we want to make sure that you complete your boiler flushing well before we enter Japanese waters. Over"

In the cruiser's CIC, sailors swore that they could see smoke wisping from the Engineer's ears. He keyed the handset and responded. "Cruiser, Engineer here. We had no idea that there would be any political ramifications from intentionally dumping pollutants into Japanese waters. It never occurred to us that they might not approve of it. We will take that into account and make sure that we finish well before then. Anything further? Over."

"Staff, roger, thank you. Out."

Supposedly, the bright one on the staff was pleased with himself, until it was gently pointed out to him that the Engineer's response was heavily laced with sarcasm. By breakfast the following morning, every engineering officer throughout the task group was laughing about it.

The watch in the cruiser's CIC held their laughs until the Chief Engineer had left Combat, slamming the door behind him.
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[1] Some details have been changed to protect the guilty, at least one of whom is still on active duty
[2] Why there was such concern over dumping water that had salt and/or diluted citric acid was more a matter of politics than science.
[3] Any time you opened up a boiler, you had to hydro it. High-pressure steam leaks are bad news.
[4] Also known as the "Red Phone", from the color of the remote stations in CIC and the Bridge.

Let Go the Anchor!

There were two basic ways for a ship to be at rest in port. One was to moor alongside a pier or quay wall (or to tie up outboard of a ship so moored) or anchor out.[1]

In many ports, anchorages were laid out on the charts. When the navigator picked a spot to anchor, he had to lay out a proposed swing circle. The swing circle was determined by the center of the proposed anchorage, plus the length of the anchor chain payed out and the length of the ship. The length of anchor chain, or "scope", was determined by the depth of the anchorage, plus the distance from the hawse pipe[2] and then that figure was multiplied by 7 or so.

Navy anchors had flukes on them. The scope of the chain ensured that if there was any pull on the anchor by the ship due to currents or winds, the pull was in a horizontal direction, which tended to dig the flukes into the bottom, thus holding the ship.

The ship would approach the desired anchorage from downwind or down-current. The goal was to coast into the anchorage so that there would be little way on. Ideally, the ship would coast slightly through the desired point and then drift back through. At the desired point, the navigator would recommend dropping the anchor; the Conning Officer would so order it and the order would be passed to the forecastle by sound-powered telephone talkers. At the instant that the anchor was indeed let go from the forecastle, the quartermasters would shoot a round of bearings and the chart would be marked for the center of the swing circle.

Then the ship would drift back, paying out the anchor chain. This was a little touchy, as you didn't want the ship to drift too fast and pay the chain out too fast. The ship's engines would be used to control the speed and, if the current was nonexistent, the shp would back down.

Anchor chain was furnished to ships in lengths known as "shots". Each shot of chain was fifteen fathoms long, or 90 feet. The shots were held to one another by a detachable link; it looked from a distance like a regular anchor chain link, but it could be broken apart.[3]. The deck force used the brake on the anchor windlass to slow the chain as the desired length was reached. The amount of chain payed out was always set so that a detachable link was on deck when the chain was paid out.

Two stoppers knows as "pelican hooks" were used to hold the chain.

The amount of chain paid out would be adjusted so that the detachable link was between the two pelican hooks. In the event of an emergency or if the anchor was fouled, the detachable link would be opened, the chain broken and the outboard pelican hook would be knocked free, dropping the chain to the anchor into the water.[4] Nobody liked doing that, for it would take a floating crane and Navy divers to recover the anchor.

If I remember right, there was about eight shots of chain for the anchor. Every link of the second-to-the last shot, known as the "warning shot", was painted yellow; every link of the last shot, known as the "danger shot", was painted red. If the ship was anchoring and the yellow and red shots came out at speed, expect the forecastle crew to run aft as fast as they could, for the bitter end of the chain was about to be ripped from the bulkhead in the chain locker and come up flailing around the forecastle.

Once the chain was secured, the navigator would plot the swing circle. There would be a watch both in CIC and on the Bridge that would plot the ship's position every fifteen minutes or so. If the ship began to drift outside of the swing circle, then the anchor was not holding and the ship would weigh anchor and get underway to re-anchor. That assumes that the anchor chain hadn't parted. If it had, the ship would either just leave port or re-anchor with the other anchor.[5]

There is an old Royal Navy sea story about anchoring. A destroyer was making an approach to its anchorage in Hong Kong. That was tricky, both because of the currents and the large amount of ship traffic in the port, from small boats, through junks and merchantmen. The destroyer made a flawless approach and, as she made the final approach to her anchorage, the destroyer flotilla commodore had his signalmen send, by flashing light, a one-word message to the destroyer: "Good."

But then things went bad. The anchor didn't drop when it was released (possibly the anchor windlass's brake was on) and the winds and currents pushed the destroyer away from the desired anchorage. The destroyer narrowly avoided a few collisions with other traffic in the harbor.

The commodore watched all this happen and had the following message blinkered to the destroyer: "Append to my last: God."
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[1] Or one could moor to a buoy by using the anchor chain to fasten to the buoy. I never saw this done.
[2] Where the anchor chain exits the hull of the ship.
[3] Not easily. The detachable links were supposedly color-coded to indicate the amount of chain paid out. At the end of the first shot, the link on either side of the detachable link was pained white, at the end of the second shot, two links on either side of the detachable link were pained white, and so on and so forth. Over time, the paint would wear off, though.
[4] In the event that this had to be done under fire, you'd want to send out the deck force seaman with a size 20 neck and a size 2 hat.
[5] This was a pain in the ass for some ships, such as the Knox class, which had only been equipped with a single anchor windlass. For them, the deck force had to take the main anchor chain off the windlass and then feed the other chain around it. Which was backbreaking work.

Target Shooting at Sea

One of the things that was occasionally done was to inflate something very large, like a weather balloon, and drop it over the side. It could then be used as a target at longer ranges.

So one day, a ship I was riding on did that. I was riding it to conduct and observe some tests.[1] Since the ship was independently transiting, I didn't have much to do, so I went topside to watch the shooting.

One of the weapons that the sailors were shooting at the balloon was a M-79 "Bloopergun".

They were firing blue rounds.[2] The balloon was off the starboard side at maybe 300 yards or so and the ship was steaming around the balloon in sort of a lazy circle. Most of the sailors were missing to the left of the balloon.

I said something to one of my fellow shipriders along the lines of: "That thing is a big as a barn and they can't hit it."

The gunner's mate senior chief must have overheard me, for he spun around, fixed me with his patented Goat Locker Stare and said: "Maybe you'd like to give it a try, Ma'am."

"Thank you, Senior Chief, I'd like that." So I went over there and he gave me a fifteen second checkout on the controls of the M-79. I checked to make sure that the windage adjustment was centered, then I shouldered the weapon, aimed and fired.

The dummy warhead splashed right in front of the balloon. The senior chief's jaw dropped and he said something along the lines of: "Goddammit, Lieutenant, how'd you do that?"

"Easy," I said, as I handed the Bloopergun back to him. "The balloon isn't moving, the ship is. So you gotta lag the target, not lead it."

Don't ask me about recoil, I don't remember it kicking that much. What I should have done, though, was to ask for the cartridge case as a souvenir, and I didn't do that.
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[1] Never you mind what kind of tests. If I were to tell you, I really would have to kill you.
[2] The projectiles were inert.