Vought VE-7

1922 – Lt. Cmdr. Virgil C. Griffin, in a Vought VE-7SF makes first the takeoff from a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, USS Langley (CV 1) anchored in York River, Va.

From the Richmond-Times Dispatch:

On Oct. 17, 1922, as the Langley lay anchored in the York River, Lt. V.C. Griffin’s Vought VE-7SF biplane took off from its deck, the first takeoff from a Navy aircraft carrier. Griffin is believed to have flown the plane back to Norfolk, where it had been loaded onto the Langley, Forrest said.

Lt. Cmdr. Griffin was attached to the “Bounty Hunters” of “Fighting Two” (VFA-2 is the present name for the squadron and it is still commissioned).

Interested in more aircraft carrier aviation history? Here’s your link.

Gee, I can’t believe I scooped SteelJaw Scribe and Far East Cynic (both CV aviation guys, but since they are VAW and not VF/VFA types), and Instapinch! I’m letting Capt Lex have a pass, since he’s doing the “I’m here from da gov’ment, and I’m here to help!” thing with forward deployed forces right now.

Part VIII is here.

In the fall of 1986, I also purchased an Apple ][gs. The short story of the acquisition is the Surface Forces, Atlantic Officer’s Wives Club had a scholarship and annually held an auction to raise money. We were *ahem* encouraged to find worthwhile items to donate for this endeavor. I did track down a few items that did make some money for the scholarship in the silent auction part of the evening and later, a ][gs went up for the main auction. I, being the hobbyist I was, lusted after the 128K of the newer version of the workhorse, the new mouse “pointing device” and it’s early graphical user interface (GUI). They brought it out and wanted to start the bidding at $900. No one raised their hand or spoke. It was a great item, but no one seemed rich enough. Finally, after much cajoling from the CNSL Chief or Staff’s wive, we began the bidding. I think someone first said $600. Anyhow, the “battle enused” and I won at $825. My evil plan was to put it in the paper and make a few dollars, as I couldn’t really afford it at the time. As I walked out to the car with my prize, one couple said they wanted it and asked if I’d take $850. I turned them down politely, and the next day put my ad in the paper.

One call came that week, and, after the initial fact finding by the caller, and I guess the attempt to see how little I’d take, I never got another call. I sold it to my sister for what I paid for it the following week. I will admit to having pulled it all out of the boxes and booting it up for a few hours, before I reboxed it for shipment.

Somewhere in this time period, I got a look at a program by Owl Software named “Guide.” I can’t find any links to it, but I saw it running on the Apple ][ series. It may have been at AppleFest in 1983 (held in Boston). Anyhow, I was intrigued for you could mark a section of text and when a user clicked on it, another document would load and be displayed. You could use it for acronyms, of more detailed info on a topic, and there seemed to be no limits to the “depth” of the linking. I thought you could generate a document coveinr all aspects of a topic, to the very minutest level of detail, yet the reader wold only have to dig in as far as necessary to make sure they followed/understood the writing. Of course, now we know this as HTML, but, if you’ve followed the series, this is my second encouter with software that used the methodolgy of the Wolrd Wide Web, years after I had seen it.

Also in this time frame, probably around early 1986, I convinced the spouse we should upgrade to a Mac, now that used ones were on the market. I do recall seeing the 1984 SuperBowl commercial for the Mac, and then kept my eye on the development, but it was too expensive. I finally found one two years later, when someone else was upgrading their system, and I bought their Mac 512K, complete with the single external 400K 3.5″ floppy.

Now, about 4.5 years into owning computers, I moved from 1Mhz (8 bit words)/48K/134K (storage) to 8Mhz (16 bit words) /512K/400K (storage) Moden spped had moved from 300 bps to 1200 bps over the same time frame.

From here I began learning about “object oriented programming” (OOP) from a program that was part of the Mac purchase (if new) or $30 if purchased separately with HyperCard ( I bought it when it came out in 1987). It allowed you to manage data and pictures and place buttons all over the background, and you could “program” on a set of cards, much like having a rolodex, and each card was a new surface to work on. Not only did you do much of the work graphically, you cold then attach code to any of the “objects” on the screen. I, once more, figured out some things I wanted to do and then figured out how to make HyperCard do it for me. I hacked up someone else’s public domain address book, and I transmogrified it so I could also keep track of who I send Christmas cards to each year, and also for the current year, where I made it print out all my mailing labels for the year I was working on them.

I also found out it was much more fun to create a “this is everything” letter for Chritmas, then I’d cut and paste each one going out, depending on how much contact I’d had with the friendd/relative that year. Ah, the magic of word processing…

Next “expose:” Retreading other serial posts, the HyperCard in Navigation and 4th Dimension helps lay out a long range project.

Sikorsky YR-4B (HNS-1) in NASA wind tunnel testing

1943 – The Navy accepts its first helicopter, a Sikorsky YR-4B (HNS-1), at Bridgeport, Conn.

Click on the picture for more history of this helo from Fiddler’s Green.

How about this for deck quals?:

H Frank Gregory, now a Lieutenant Colonel, subsequently demonstrated the XR-4 from a platform mounted on the tanker SS Bunker Hill. in May, 1943, 24 landings and take-offs being made. Additional tests were conducted in July 1943 with the XR-4, and the first YR-4A, operating from a stern platform on the troopship SS James Parker. In the course of this 20-hour test, the two helicopters made 162 landings and take-offs.

That was before they had NWP-42!

To my former shipmates from HC-6 (LCDR Al Jacka), HSL-32 (LCDR “Buzz” Buzzell) and HSL-44 (LCDR Marty ??? (age…sorry)), this one’s for you!

Plenty of others have beat me too this post, but, I’m not one that likes birthdays much anyhow.

But, to the only service that has a mandate to Congress to be constantly authorized, 231 years of fine service to the Nation, at home and aboard.

Much has changed, an back in the begining, the CHENG was the Deck Deparment Head.

There were no aviators to sit in the wardroom and complain thay had seen all the movies already

There were wooden ships and “Iron Men.” We still have one of those two commodities.

Submariners were a “Navy of One.”

The Navy was a “wet” one. It took a politician many years later to make it “dry.”

Deployments could last much longer than 6-8 months.

There was no “Trade School” for officers; you learned by an apprenticeship type program.

No evaporators, so no complaining about “water hours.”

No “twidgets,” but no cool electronic gadgets, either.

Anyhow…just a few thoughts on this 231st occasion of the Birth of the US Navy.

Eagle1 posted, as did others, in rememberance of the the attack by a small boat on the USS COLE (DDG-67) in Yemen.

At Linda Sog’s blog, she has posted pictures of the 17 shipmates we lost that day.

We can take solace in knowing the USS COLE, as are all other vessels attacked in the the ramp up to the GWoT, returned to sea service and were not lost, a tribute to the crews we entrusted with these large vessels.

Moving right along from Part VI, where I chronicled my attempts to “obtain” Zenith Z-248 computers from the Supply Corps. It didn’t work….

So, now I’m about 3.5 years into owning a personal computer. In Oct 1981, I had a 1Mhz processor with 48K of RAM. BY the spring of 1985, I had moved up to a 1 Mhz processor with 64K of RAM. Wow…consider how long that was compared to now. Macs were still in my future…

Apple //c with 9″ “green screen” monitor

Anyhow, I was now moving from a fixed grey hull to the life of a nomadic “tactical DESRON” troll. The Apple //c was around
by now. I was digging throught the classified ads of the Virginian Pilot and found someone advertizing a //c and it also included a 1200 baud modem! I Watched the ad for a few days and the day after the ad went out of the paper, I called and asked if he still had the computer. Yes, was the reply. I told him I’d give him $1200 for everything. He balked, I fingered the freshly withdrawn $20s to get his attention and asked “How do I get to your house?” He gave me directions.

I picked up the //c, the modem and an ImageWriter ][ 9 pin dot matrix, serially interfaced printer. Home I went with my find and had my 300 baud modem sold shortly there after.

One of the programs that had come with the //c was “AppleWorks.” AppleWorks was a combination word processor, spreadsheet and database program, and I think it also had an intergrated communications management function. This was the fore runner of the “office suite” software packages we are so reliant on anymore. I had obviously done word processing, and had played with the very first spreadsheet, Visicalc (written to run on the Apple ][ first), and also had been doing work with dBase II in C/PM. Now I had the three functions all resident within one program, which, came in very handy later on at work.

While on this adventure, and I’m not completely clear on the dates, I was able to attend the Apple Expo in Boston. I think it was in 1983, while I was at Department Head School in Newport (yes, this part is out of sequence). I recall being fascinated with speech recognition software for the Apple ][ series. You could have 64 voice files per “library.” You would speak the command, then type in the command it would execute. You could interact with the disk operating system, so you could easily increase the “vocabulary” by using some commands to load other library files. I spoke to one of the programmers and found out Apple was employing several Ph.Ds to engineer the digitizing of speech. Part of the discussion was about how we speak in analog streams, yet we still think of speech as sets of words with “white space” between them. No so for the computer. The computer has to be powerful enough to constantly be guessing which part of the captured wave form comprises discrete words, no small task. Obviously, we have come a long way, but some of the extra money I spent on Apple products went to thier extrensive R&D efforts that brought us the first viable GUIs and many other things we now take for granted.

I can’t recall the exact circumstances, but as we geared up for the Mediterranean/North Arabian Sea cruise, one of my Apple Club friends began dabbing with the IBM PC stuff and showed me a program named R:Base 5000. It was a database manager, and you could type in english like questions and it would roll out the answers from the data tables. I got a copy and loaded it on the Z-248 the staff had gotten for administrative work. We packed up our cruise boxes and I devoted a blue and white footlocker to be the carrying case for my Apple //c computer anf the printer, so I could use them to do my work while we made the world free for democracy.

I tell the story of the cruise in the series A Journey into History.

Coming next: The Watch Officer’s Notebook and rugged computers

Sometime in late 1989, there I was, watching Marty, the valiant rotary wing aviator and Det Officer-in-Charge (OIC), and one of his boy wonders saunter past me in the centerline passageway, wearing their flight helmets, and carrying helmet bags that appeared to have helmets in them. Me, having recalled the warning to always heed the “little warning bells in the back of your head” at Prospective Executive Officer (PXO) school, I called to marty to inquire at what looked to be out of sorts.

It went something like this:

Me: “Marty, what’s in the helmet bags?”
Marty: “Oh, tapes, XO.”
Me: “Really, what kind?”
Marty: “Music cassettes.”
Me: “Why, pray tell, are you taking music cassettes up in the helo?”
Marty: “The training device in the console can also play music.”

Interesting. Never forget sailors (and officers) will always figure out the capabilities of anything you provide to them. I will admit to also being much like that as a JO. Certainly if one person doesn’t, the next one will, and the word spreads.

Me: “So, you’re gonna be cranking up the tunes while you fly your mission?”
Marty: “Sure, it gets boring up there.”

That, well not exactly the precise words, nevertheless, portray the conversation. They headed out to pre-flight and off they went into the skies over the Med, or the Persian Gulf, to head bang while conducting surface surveillance. I’m sure they were not the only crew in the fleet to figure out they had a built in stereo system to chase away the boredom while being vibrated along with several thousand other parts of the SH-60B airframe.

The epilogue to this happened a few years later, when I was inspecting Atlantic Fleet ships for Combat Systems readiness. I poked my head into the Electronic Warfare module of a DDG-38 Class ship, and pushing back the curtain, saw the Electronic Warfare On Board Trainer (EWOBT), an IBM PC system, equipped with a CD-ROM, off to the side. This computer was fielded to keep EW operators proficient by running training scenarios, complete with audio of various electronic emitters fro the CD-ROMs provided. The headset hung close by on a hook, and there was a heavy metal band music CD laying out of it’s jewel case on top of the case. Once more, being curious, I asked the EW on watch what the CD was there for. “Oh, we can play music CDs on there, too” he said without flinching, or thinking. I had had an EWOBT on my ship (same as the one discussed above with the musical helo), and had no clue the EWs were most likely playing tunes while on watch, looking very much like they were sharpening their skills as EW operators. Oh, well.

I made a point of letting the officers on the ships that the EWs might also be enjoying some entertainment on the mid-watch.

Well, was it a nuke, or wasn’t it?

Back in 1965, the Navy conducted a series of tests (two underwater ones at San Clemente Is and three surface shots) that simulated an atomic bursts, by building a really, really big pile of conventional explosives (TNT) and yelled “FIRE IN THE HOLE!” while ships were parked on concentric rings around the penninsula of Kaho`olawe Island.

More info on Sailor Hat here.

I know of this, because we used to use the Navy training film to fill classroom time while the training devices for the team trainer were down.

Maybe they just stuffed lots of semtex in a hole and fired it up, just to see what we’d do…It’s called OPDEC (Operational Deception) if they did…

The “Lost Battalion,” the 1st Battalion of the 308th of the 77th “Liberty” Divison of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) was trapped behind the German Lines in the Argonne Forest from the 2nd thru the 8th of October. This would be the day, 88 years later, that they would have been back safely form the fight.

Many sites on the net are out there, here is one.

Here is a well done movie I saw a few months back, where I first heard of the story.

600 men went in, led my Major Whittlesey, 200 walked out. Quite a story of tenacity in a pretty hopeless situation. 3 Medal of Honors, 29 Distinguished Service Crosses. That list speaks of plenty of herosim.Secret Passage movie download

Part III told one story of automation at my training command (1st shore tour). This part is another way my hobby helped at work.

HP 7470A Two Pen Plotter

The “Training Aid Graiphics Generator” (TAGG) was spawned while I was at Dam Neck, because the support we got from the training support sucked. Need to be filled linked with supervisor upset no one seemed interested in getting the work done for his shop, so, off I went to fix the problem.

I arrived at Fleet Combat Training Center, Atlantic (FCTCL) in Sep 80. I was assigned to instruct the pre-Commissining crews of the PERRY Class frigates. When I arrived, we had the course material to teach the Baseline 3 program for the ships, which was also installed in our mockup. At the time, the Fleet was upgrading the systems at sea, and coming out of Bath Iron Works and Todd with Baseline 4. Big disconnect. We were saddled with teaching from “IGs” (Instructor Guides) that were now outdated, and running a mockup with software that wouldn’t ever be seen by the sailors we trained. Granted, it wasn’t a wasted effort, but certainly not satisfactory. For the first two weeks of the four week course, we taught the crews the console modes, which was done using slides depicting what they would see as they performed their functions. These, of course, were also outdated.

What to do? Well, get the materials updated. One part involved the updating of the entire set of IGs, to include the editing of the Terminal and Enabling Objectives. My shop got to work on this, and this part is fodder for a later sea story. The other part was getting the slides redone. Come to find out, the Naval Training and Education Support Center for this function is done by an office full of draftsmen (civil servants) all the way over at the Norfolk Operating Base (NOB) about 40 miles away. Time line to get it done? Somewhere between 6 months and a year. This young LT declared that unsat, and began figuring out how to tighten up the OODA Loop.

The answer came in the form of an (you guessed it) an Apple ][+ computer, with the addition of a Hewlett Packard HP7470A two pen plotter. I convinved the boss to get this very expensive equipment (around a grand for the plotter, and I got him to get us 2). Now, the problem was getting the new toy to draw our slides. Apple BASIC programming language was about all I knew, so I embarked on that journey to create a specific program, where an instructor could sit down and in a few minutes, be printing out a slide (on paper or transparency plastic). The other knowledge element was the language needed to “talk to” the plotter, HP Graphics Language (HPGL).

I didn’t realize, until 1993, the way I went about producing the program was very much in line with what became accepted as the process for developing a functional software package, and that story comes much later. I figured out the requirements, then I flow charted (some of it, I was bad about doing this part well), then began the coding process. I picked a lot of brains back then, the people of the Tidewater Apple Worms (discussed in Part II) was my brain trust and helped me over plenty of programming hurdles.

What I ended up with was a program that asked the operator what type display (the two variants of the tabular OJ-194 Tactical Data System Console were the Digital Display Indicator (DDI) and the Digital Read Out (DRO) type), and what tracks to display (up to 16 vehicular tracks or points). The tracks could be modified with overlaying symbology, such as engagement status, and course and speed vectors. I added “rules” that mimiced real world constrains, such as you could not engage a friendly vehicle, and onlyy one item could be shown as “hooked” (selected) into the program to help keep the display accurate. Two different slides would be produced for each teaching point, where one was the operator’s keyboard of Variable Action Buttons (VABs) to the left, with a 360 degree radar scope display, showing the selected TDS tracks/points, and the other slide was a DRO/DDI with the info from the tracks shown, above the upper half of the radar display. I had to program the entire set of TDS symbols into the program’s imbedded database, using the draw commands to talk to the plotter. I seem to recall that came to about 100 items.

Net result: An instructor could crank a slide out in about 10 minutes, either camera ready to take to the photo lab in Gallery Hall to make 35mm slides, or have a transparency for an overhead projector, all in color (I had programmed for multiple colors and prompted for pen changes, if required to complete the slide). It was, just a little faster than 6 months with the draftsmen.

I did find out that you could have program data encroach into your video memory area, as the Apple reserved enough memory for two pages of display, yet the operating system didn’t safeguard against variables and other stuff overwriting this area, when memory filled up. So, sometimes, you’d make a slide, then go to make another, and the video display for the computer was very strange, right before the program crashed.

I worked that program thru the 6 months after I left my assignment and went to my next school to tweak it to get rid of the errors in the video. It was a pretty stable program for those days, and I got it running pretty well and did my best to idiot proof it. I also prodcued a users manual, and kept my old command updated with new versions. TAGG was even flexible enough ti be used for any TDS console training, so it had a larger reach than just for the FFG-7 ships. The DD-963, DDG-993, CG/DDG and LHA training courses all could use the program, too.

This effort concluded when I submitted the program to the MILCAP program. Yes, I did the estimates for the cost savings ($13+/silde vs $1.40/silde (in 1983 $)) and computed many slides wold be made. The purpose of the MILCAP is to take an idea out of the trenches and put it into the lap of those who are part of the support mechanism, more equipped to smooth “it” up and do life cycle maintenance. And, if along the way, you save “them” (read taxpayers), they cut you in on a sliding scale, beginning roughly at 10%. As the Zenith Z-100 and Z-110 desktops were beginning to find their way into the offices, as a result of the USAF Contract, I had also taken the time to review the programming manuals and indicated I would make the necessary mods to allow the use of the program on those platforms. It was evaluated as very useful, and had been used extensively, and was aout to be used more, then it got buried because “we’re using Zenith computers now.”

Regardless, it took a huge load off a few offices of insturctors, while also taking the workload off an office full of draftsmen using hand cut out colored strips of plastic to make training aids and therein may have been the rub…

Next segment: The wonders of moving up to 64K (!!!) of memory, a Z-80 CPU card, dBase II, modems and a free copy of PASCAL.