C’mon….someone must be writing good material out there…..

Anyhow, while I’m waiting, here’s more of the story I left you hanging with from last week…

Now, the tables had turned and it was going to be the crew of the USS SEATTLE (AOE-3) that would be holding the other end stick during an intrusion drill. Not to fear, OSC Mac, who had done some work with the SEALs in the South East Asian War Games, was in control. I was still and Ensign in training, so I didn’t comprehend all that was going on. Anyway, the Chief concocted a wonderful plan. Step one was to get three believable “intruders.”

• #1: ET2 Mike Krutsch. Disguise? Jeans, flannel shirt, hair pushing the regs. Story? Navy Exchange delivery guy with flowers for the SEATTLE XO.
• #2: OS3 Tom Mazzula. Disguise? Not really, he just wore his dungarees, but…he had a plastic baggie of “green vegetable matter” partially hanging out of his pocket.
• #3: OS2 Relph (I’m not completely sure I have this one right). No disguise either, and nothing special in hand/on his person.

“The Plan:” ET2, with a 3″x5″ card made black with magic marker, covering his red base sticker on the bumper of his personal Vega, drives down the pier (you actually could do that in those days), parking at the foot of the brow. Using his “excuse” of having to deliver the flowers, he would attempt to gain access to the ship. OS3 would, as soon as Mike got almost all the way up the ladder (about 30 feet long), would commence towards the quarterdeck, acting stoned/drunk. As he got the the top of the brow, OS2 Relph would also head aboard the ship. Saturation of the attention of the three watchstanders was the plan, in hopes of getting at least one past the security of the ship.

Well…the results were in quickly, once the “Plan” was put into motion….Krutsch parked right at the foot of the ladder and was hailed from the Quaterdeck. He replied he had flowers (Holding the box high) (oh, yeah, Chief Mac paid for the flowers), and was waved to come up. They never asked for any identification, but then a guy looking kinda drunk was coming up the ladder just now. All attention focused on Mazzula. Mike stood by, then quietly wandered aft on the main deck area and proceed to head for the after superstructure area, where the Executive Officer’s stateroom was. IN the background, imagine the hoots and hollers of the OOD, POOW and Messenger when they “caught a doper!” red-handed….Oh…OS2 Relph came up just as the commotion was in full swing and, not being fully questioned, inquired as to what happened. “WE just caught this guy!” (Holding up baggy of green vegetable matter as proof of the valiant response. Relph siddled off to the side, out of the gaze of the watchstanders….

Oh, yes…I almost forgot. SEATTLE was one of those ships that we could not confirm or deny the presence of nuclear weapons aboard. Why does that matter? You had to have two response teams on call, the Security Alert Team (SAT) and Backup Alert Force (BAF), who would “respond to intrusion attempts and were 1) armed and 2) trained specifically in the use of “lethal force” rules of engagement (ROE).

Mike Krutsch made it to the XO’s office/stateroom and, finding no one in the space, left the box of flowers (with included note “THIS IS A BOMB”) on the desk of the Executive Officer of the USS SEATTLE (AOE-3), having never been challenged by any of the crew on his way through the ship, looking like a civilian or over scruffy sailor in “civies.” He then wandered back to the Quarterdeck area, at which time, the faces of the watch team went white, realizing they had been penetrated in a most unkind manner. “SECURITY ALERT! SECURITY ALERT! QUARTERDECK! AWAY THE SAT! AWAY THE BAF!” sounded on the 1MC General Announcing System. Mike, all grins, when asked if he was an intruder, answer “Yes” (the game rules) and then, realizing, as armed sailors came running, there was someone else unaccounted for…..

“Are you working alone?” “No.” “SECURITY ALERT! SECURITY ALERT!…” They finally found OS2 Relph in the forward part of the ship, where he had wandered off to.

Well, they were mightily embarrassed at being humiliated, but…it was nothing more than payback, with attitude. The Command Duty Officer was obligated to sign three Z-5-O letters, with two having to be indicated that they had been penetrated and failed the drill…..And, our manliness was feeling more intact, having paid the SEATTLE crew back in spades…

Oh, Chief Mac didn’t just roll over and go back to sleep after this operation….come back next Wednesday for the follow on report of sailors in port running drills.

It’s been pretty slim in terms of comments lately. I did fix the problem I injected into the system, so….feel free to fact check me or add to any discussion. Post trackbacks here, also.

Sea stories. A serial story, today the first part….

Back in “the day,” one of the drills we had to complete on a periodic basis (I believe this one was quarterly), was the Intrusion Drill, know widely by the exercise nomenclature of “Z-5-O” from the list of exercises. This was spoken as “Zulu Five Oscar.”

The general manner of running this drill was your parent squadron would notify one of the other ships in the squadron that they were being tasked to run the drill on you and they gave them a several day time span to do this and then file the grade sheets with the squadron. What were they to do? Send people to your quarterdeck with false/no identification and attempt to be allowed access to the ship without and escort and being properly recorded in the security log at the Quarterdeck. The idea was to see if the august trio of inport watch standers (the Officer of the Deck (OOD), Petty Officer of the Watch (POOW) and Messenger of the Watch (MOOW), would properly assess the person asking to come aboard was not to be allowed unhindered access to the vessel.

The normal inport quarterdeck of any ship in that era was manned by these three men and, during the work day, were generally very busy with handling the ebb and flow of those coming and going, passing ship’s standard routine, routing incoming phone calls (back in the 70’s most ship’s had two, maybe three phone lines, the one to the quarterdeck was the published number and received calls from businesses, other commands, distraught girlfriends wanting to know if their boy friend had arrived yet, the supply center, and the command duty officer from the senior ship at the pier (Pier SOPA) to inform the OOD of a pallet on the pier, or that the man hoisting the Jack (the little flag flown on the jackstaff on the bow (the “flag” in the Navy is called the “Ensign” and it is hoisted on the staff at the stern) didn’t have his hat on properly at morning colors, or some such complaint about a breach of good order and discipline or general military appearance. And then add the internal issues to the ship to the workload of concerns. I’m not making excuses, I’m just relating the mayhem that is the norm at this watch station on a moment to moment basis.

Being in the “Fat Ship” Navy, we didn’t always seem so serious about things that seemed like purely warfighting issues. After all, we only had four converted from aircraft 20mm cannons as our main battery while at sea, mounted on tripods at the four upper level corners of the after superstructure, all manually aimed (think of the movies of the deck gunners in WWII firing at incoming kamikazes…that was us in the cruise missile and jet age), and inport, two armed men, one the POOW, the other a roving security watch were the combined defense force for 8M gallons of fuels and 600 tons of ordnance. They were equipped with the mighty 1911 .45 caliber pistol and two magazines of ammunition (14 rounds).

However, we were serious about our mission to keep the glamorous aviators and the greyhounds of the sea on task by supplying them with fuel, spare parts and chow.

The drills, and I had only been aboard a few months at this point, and it was my first ship, so I was still but an Ensign, without much understanding of the way things were at this point, were generally done by gentleman’s agreement, unspoken as it was within the fat ship fraternity, to not let your “shipmates” fail, unless they were literally sleepwalking at their duty, in which case, then it was fair to write them up as failing. Minimal effort to catch the “intruders” was sufficient to get a passing score submitted…Most drills ended with “OK, yes, I am. Here, sign the paper” and life went back to “normal” at the Quarterdeck.

And then one day, you know it just had to happen, someone decided to shake things up a bit….

I didn’t have the watch, and it wasn’t even my duty day, yet I did comprehend that when a sailor from the USS SEATTLE (AOE-3) made it past our quarterdeck and was allowed to wander freely, without a visitors badge, it was bad for us.

I don’t recall the specifics, but somehow my division Chief Petty Officer, OSC Michael P. McCaffery, was tasked to do the honors of “counterbattery fire.” For all I know, he may have, and it would have been in character, volunteered to formulate and execute the operation to show our appreciation with the breaking of the status quo at the piers.

The “game rules” for conducting a Z-5-O were roughly thus:

• Three attempts were to be made within the time frame in the tasking letter;
• Real military identification cards could not be used;
• If asked “Are you and intruder?”, the “intruder” had to respond truthfully;
• Copies of military IDs could be used (meaning from the Xerox machine).

A long discussion could launch from this point about how agents of the KGB would never dare to use real stolen ID blanks to try to get access to a ship, that they, too, only had the technology of SAVIN or Xerox to make up false papers for doing their dirty work. On top of that, it was a well known fact that all foreign agents would tell you right away, when specifically questioned, that they were up to the business of stealing military secrets (If only Jack Bauer had known this, it would have saved several presidents lots of international embarrassment).

So…one day, the Operations Officer, LCDR Frank Mueller, presented a letter from the squadron to me. Subject? Yes, you guessed it: Tasking to conduct a Z-5-O on the USS SEATTLE (AOE-3).

You’ll have to come back next Wednesday for more (and not the rest) of the story…

Open trackbacks! Now, if I could just get comments working…if you have one, email it until I can get the background issues cleared up. I’m sure I can kludge it in when I get it….

So, post your work here!

Sea stories?? Yes…it will be here in a few hours…busy day here…it also will be in the “Australian” theme of the previous two weeks….UPDATE: Here is the promised story

I had a Royal Australian Naval Officer, LCDR Kim Bailey-Jones, as my project officer for the PERRY Class FFG Combat Direction Systems computer program. This was a standing exchange billet, as the RAN had 4 FFGs in their fleet and cost shared in the maintenance and upgrades for the program.

Money was getting tight in the 1994-95 time frame for the military in general, and we regularly received calls from the main program sponsor, Program executive Officer – Theater Air Defense (PEO-TAD) to recall funds from the authorized “SEATASK.” On most occasions, I was asked to respond with how to we might absorb a $1.1M cut (for an overall funding line of $11M) for the various PEO-TAD projects covered. LCDR Jones sat down and sharpened his pencil and typing effort in a spreadsheet, so as to make his point in the upcoming Quarterly Progress Review to our TAD sponsors.

As we were gathered in the large command auditorium, and it was LCDR Jone’s turn to review his project’s status. He got to his budgeting slide and said: “If you can’t give me this much, then just cancel the program and save the money (which was several million).” Of course, he has pre-briefed the “bombshell” up the chain of command and had approval to say such a thing.

Bottom line, the expertise required to safely and responsibly maintain the program needed 4 discrete fields of expertise, and his bottom line funding line represented the barest of funds to keep those four people on staff for such work. Well, the PEO Rep, an Engineering Duty Captain certainly was taken back, but, when Kim made his case, his logic was infallible and there really wasn’t much to be said, but just to note the amount of funding that must remain in place if the FFG-7 Class was to stay at sea.

Oh, I had a Canadian Armed Force officer on staff, too….

Last week, a “nickel back” story, and this week, more stories about “Aussies.”

In the meantime, feel free to track back (except for spammers…)

So, there I was with a ship load of Aussies in training. They were, more so than most ship’s crews for our FFGs, really far from home.

So, if you head down to the club with the Aussies, they have a particular cultural behavior to promote equanimity between those in attendance. It’s considered polite for buy drinks in “rounds.” After all, you are at the club, to tell “sea stories” but….well, to drink.

In Aussie-speak, they call a round of drinks for your group a “shout.” So, the “shouts” begin. Not a big deal, but there is another rule: Everyone buys a shout. Ok, makes sense. Now the third rule: You stay to have a shout from everyone. To even put your cash on the bar and make sure there’s enough for your social obligation, then say your goodbyes is *not* acceptable.

Lessons learned the hard way (called in hard gained wisdom): Never go drinking with more Aussies than the number of drinks you want (can) drink in that setting….

It’s that time again! Post ’em if you got ’em…

Now…the “Sea Story” for the week: “The Original ‘Nickel Back'” or: “How to make civil servant cringe.”

Besides building a lot of FFG-7 Class frigates for us, we also made two for the Aussies; Two w/o LAMPS MK III helicopter capable and two with. Being the officer in charge of training for our non-LAMPS MK III vessels, my office had the pleasure of hosting the crews of the FFG-01 and -02. -01 was there before I reported, but the crew of the ADELAIDE (FFG-02) arrived during my “watch.”

There are funds set aside to show some hospitality to long term foreign visitors (in this case the course was 4 weeks long) and I was informed I could arrange for a visit to the Williamsburg Busch Gardens facility for our Australians. I was also tasked to provide “chaperones” from my staff, and this could include their spouses/girl friends. I forget the ratio, but it was enough for a few of us to tag along on the taxpayers kindness.

Anyhow, I was supplied with the cash to purchase the tickets and pay for some other minor approved charges. We went, we had a great time. The guests of the taxpayer being “english” speaking didn’t require a lot of close supervision, so it certainly wasn’t a strenuous day by any means.

So, on Monday morning, I dutifully added up the receipts for the visit and balanced it against the cash provided. I had a expended all but 5 cents…..I went to Disbursing in the Administrative building at lunch and handed my records and the nickel to the lady civil servant responsible for accounting. She looked at me and said “loose the nickel.” I looked back at her and said “I only have receipts for all but the nickel. Here it is.” Her reply was something like “do you know how much trouble it is to put that 5 cents back into the systems?” and I responded something to the effect that it was a less effort than us both getting hammered for loosing Government money.” and I left.

I know a nickel isn’t much, but it sure wasn’t mine and I had no paperwork to chase it away with, so she got to do the paperwork to put the nickel back in the taxpayers’ account.

Post your stuff here!

Chief “Mac,” my “Sea Daddy” said (while the stub of his cigar never left being clenched between his teeth) these things about pistol usage:

• “You have to put 50 rounds down range a day” (to stay proficient – he believed a 1911 .45 should feel just like another part of your body)
• “You always shoot twice. Once to get him, the second to make sure. Any fewer rounds is stupid, any more is a waste.”

Wisdom…it comes in many forms.

A wee bit late for the sun passing over the yardarm, but here nonetheless….post your good stuff!

My sea story? In a word….Seabats. I know, you think I’m pulling your legs, but…RADM Bernsen has seen ’em….and so has this guy. Today is your day to tell me how you can connect the dots.

And when you have that assignment completed, tell me about your seabat experiences….

It’s Wednesday again! Hope everyone had a great holiday season. Post your trackbacks, maybe someone will discover you here.

“Sea Story” of the day:

I had a “paper brain” that lived in my hands, being perused for the many items to be done and their status, or safely in my right seat pocket, with my wallet, which will further convey it’s relative importance. If was a 5″x8″ Day Timer with a leather cover and, believe me, it was well used in my XO days.

One day, somehow, I became “separated” from my separate memory. I believe it was after the end of a Planning Board for Training (PB4T) (held at 1300 on Thursdays weekly) while at sea on deployment. The anxiety level rose, but it was a busy day, and, after all, it couldn’t be over 453′ from me, unless it went for a swim…

It didn’t take long before an envelope was delivered to me by a watch messenger. It certainly didn’t appear that the wandering was enclosed, but, upon opening the message, I found two Polaroid pictures of said Day Timer. Both showed my almost sole source of recollection secured to a chair with the small nylon line used for the underway replenishment shot lines, and in one picture, a black gloved hand held a 1911A1 .45 caliber pistol, pointed at the Day Timer. Enclosed was a note, with some demand, beginning with “If you want to see your Day Timer alive again…”, yet, I had the Mater-at-Arms force on my side, so I chose to disregard any show of weakness.

Short moments later, the MA1 had dusted the pictures for fingerprints and, lo and behold, the miscreants had been careless, leaving their positive identification in my hands. The guilty parties were summoned to my stateroom and confronted, at which time, the leader of the pack handed over the missing collection of all tickler items to me. Chaos was fought back and the World restored to a right order.

You know, it gets boring at sea and the practical jokes sometimes get quite entertaining…..Somewhere, in a box in the attic is a set of Polaroid pictures, secured, after being used as evidence, for historical purposes.

So, there I was, flat on my back at 20,000 feet…no kiddin’…oops…wrong story and me without the obligatory huge watch (to compensate, ya know), but…it’s open season on trackbacks, so link ’em up!

Last week, I left me “on station” at the gunfire support range at San Celmente, Island, by way of discussion the continualy noise that surrounds you while abaord a ship.

So as it was training, within minutes of checking in on the radio net after maneuvering into the assigned gunnery “box,” of course the observer ahsore had targets for us…”Fire Mission! Troops in the Open! Grid: ….” and so the formatted message went, telling us what, where and some other important details. The plotters surrounding me went to work locating the spot he was adressing, marking our position on the chart and “ded reckoning” (simple time/speed/distance calculation) to show our predicted path of the ship. Once we had the target location plotted, we’d measure the azimuth to the target from the ship’s track and compare that to where the gunfire control system (GFCS) had figured (with its own computer) where the target was. We had to be within a degree of difference, or we’d have to replot and check, which burned valuable time ashore and specifically in the target’s area.

On top of the comparison to the GFCS plot, we also checked with the Ship’s Navigator to make sure his plot tracked with ours. It’s all about accuracy and speed within that. The Gunnery Officer would order the guns loaded and I would announce “plot set!’ if all the navigation data (three separate plots) were within the allowed tolerances. Our readiness would be reported to the spotter, who would give us final clearance to shoot. Usually he would have us fire a single round to see where it landed, then he would pass directions to “adjust the spot, by his best reckoing, to make the next round land on target. Back then the “Mk 1 Mod 0” eyeball and the operator’s calibration were the means of doing this. Today we have fancy laser stuff to tell the observer the distances, accurate to very small distances.

So…when the radio told us to shoot, it was my responsibility to send a standard order to the Gunnery Officer, who would relay it to the gun crew and the gun control console (GCC) operator, who would step on a foot pedal to fire the gun.

In this sequence, I would come to learn the timing from the moment I gave the order to shoot to the time the round was on it’s way. The thumping of the electrohydraulic ammo hoists and the operation of the loader tray and ram, followed by the slamming shut of the large steel breech block became familiar to me, so when we got to exercises requiring rounds to arrive on a target at a specific time, I was able to time my order so the computed time of flight for the rounds was essentially what was measured from the actual shot leaving the barrel. The “latency” was all

As I meantioned last week, the operation of the guns, whether they be the forward or after gun mount, was detectable where I stood in CIC, in the darkened space with dungaree clad sailors and khaki clad chief petty officers and officers, while I learned a deadly trade.

Maybe more specifics next week…but…that’s the short form and worthy of not interfering too much with essential afternoon shopping runs for those of us late present determiners….

Weekly Open Trackbacks. A “safe harbor” to “suggest” to readers they should take a chance on you(r writings). Go for it.

From last week’s Sea Stories, I discussed the ship at sea always being a place of noise, and I indicated I’d tell more of that this week. Here it is.

On my second ship, one of my collateral duties was that of Gunnery Liasion Officer (GLO), which entailed being the person who managed the trageting of the ship’s guns against shore targets, via a spotter, on the ground or in the air, who would identify and fix target positions.

As part of our “shakedown” training (it was a newly commissioned ship), we had to train in this mission area, and we took a trip from San Diego harbor (homeport) to the west to the firing range off San Celmente Island and I proceeded to practice a skill I first learned in the school rooms of the Fleet Training Center.

I stood at the Dead Reckoning Tracer (DRT), which, for the purposes of this work, was converted to a plain old chart table. The operation specialists had laid out the grid reference charts for the area, and set up the radio circuits and sound powered telephone headsets. Status boards (large hanging, edge lit plexiglass sheets) were redrawn with the format for the fire missions we would be tasked with and positioned so I could easily read them from where I stood. My tools, up to three stopwatches, a sharpened No. 2 pencil, dividers and the “Commanche Board,” also were out for use.

So, “perched” several decks above, and away from the fore and aft 5″54cal MK 45 gun mounts, I would still be able to hear the gun laoding mechanisms doing their work. Two decks below the guns, the magazine crews would pick the type ammuntion and powder charges from their storage and place them in the hoists. Hydraulics and mechanical systems would rapidly raise the 76 lb projectiles and the powder cases up to the gun mount, where they were automatically loaded into a tray before the ram then shoved them into the waiting breech, to have the breech block slam into place behind them, awaiting patiently for the electrical charge that will begin the “explosives train” on it’s path to sending the sleek bullet hurtling towards it’s assigned target.

I felt the operation as much as I heard it. I felt the forward gun, Mount 51, and heard it fairly clearly, but I mostly felt Mount 52, probably 350 feet aft of me in straight distance measurement, insulating itself from me thru multiple bulkheads and 4 decks of aluminum and steel. The firing of either mount, was clearly unmistakable, as I became practiced on sending high explosives many miles away on the word of a disembodied voice on the radio.

“On Station, Ready for Call for Fire” begins the sequence, alerting the forward observer you are available to pummel the enemy who dares to enter his field of view…..

More later…