Lots of distracting things today, to include the upcoming anniversary tomorrow….

But, despite my lack of focus, please feel free to post your links as trackbacks to your work.

There are two subtle things you notice in a life at sea that become so subconscious, you can’t really put your finger on what’s different, unless you think about it for a while.

The first one is the open sea, far from the shore, where the water is deep and blue, smells unlike anything you ever experience on a walk along the beach, let alone in any port facility. It’s a freshness of its own, hence “a fresh sea breeze” being a well used saying. It’s an alluring scent and one worth standing on the “weather decks” and taking deep breaths to get the full effect.

The second thing is there is always noise on the ship. At the very least, even when the ship is “cold iron” (when the ship has the main engineering plant for propulsion and electrical services shut down), the ventilation fans are running. When the ship is up and running, the hull propogates the various noises to travel througout the hull and, with time and exposure, you can detect major and unusual events at the far end of the ship. As Engineer Officer, I became very attuned to the many subtle and not so subtle indications of changes in the plant status. I recall one night, waking and realizing the watch, several decks below had started one engine and were in the process of securing the other in the forward engine room. I, of course, reached for the sound powered phone and clicked the “E-Call” buzzer to get the Enigineering Officer of the Watch (EOOW) to let me know what was up. The standard procedure was to notify me in the event of having to make equipment changes. As it turned out, it wasn’t anything major that had happened.

Two more striking times when the Ship’s noises communicated something very important was 00:32 9/18/1986. I was the Officer of the Deck and we were steaming in the South Pacific. We were running at top speed for one (of 4) engine on line when there was a *BANG* and the rapid decrease in the pitch of the turbine’s whine, as it spooled down to 0. Before the engine had had much of an opportunity to lose much speed, I had already reached for the talk switch on the 21MC box and asked the EOOW what had happened. Of course, he was up to his eyeballs in taking care of getting the initial reports in, but he said “1B is offline, starting 1A GTM.”

So, even in a ship of 563 feet and 7900 tons, the entire structure tells a story…..

The other striking time the Ship’s frame “spoke” to me will be forthcoming next Wednesday in the next schedule Ropeyarn Sunday “Sea Stories” installment.

Another opportunity to place your blogging in the eyeballs of my few readers…..Take a shot, who knows, you might get famous!

Sea stories….A short one. It’s about people, but it’s about signs.

Ships, quite necessarily, have bulkheads and doors and hatches for the purposes of preventing the spread of fire and flooding. Modern day warships also have a wonderful thing called “air conditioning.’ Basically, while the average reader understands “AC” as a creature comfort, yet aboard ship, that machinery is there primarily to keep the electronics cool, so the operating life is long. If you are able to gain some creature comfort as a result of being where the AC is, then it’s a bonus. Modify that with the ships built in the post-Vietnam era allowed for the crew living spaces to be air conditioned, to be nice to the crews.

Toss in that the AC you encounter in such spaces as Radio Central, the data processing center, transmitter rooms, and Combat Information Centers (CIC) is set to almost arctic condition levels, because the “twidget” maintainers believe the colder it is, the longer the equipment lives, and ergo, it’s longer between casualties, which then requires lots of work to fix the finicky items. If you read persona accounts of life on ships in the modern era, you will most likely come across accounts of sailors, while deployed to such wonderful vacation spots as the Persian Gulf and the equatorial Indian Ocean regions will add a top layer of a “Pea Coat” or a foul weather jacket on top of their dungarees to go and stand/sit their watch in Radio, SONAR, or CIC related spaces.

So, to the story. In order to “save” the cool, you need to maintain the “Air Conditioning boundaries,” where there are doors and hatches to the outside world, or the below decks engineering spaces. When ships are built, or overhauled, there are usually engraved bakelite plaques, mounted at eye level stating “Air Conditioning boundary – Keep Closed” (or words to that effect). Of course, some of the doors are on well traveled paths within the ship and in many cases, it makes sense, like loading stores, or bringing the stuff back from the SERVMART run, to hook or prop the doors open while carrying boxes, etc through the passageway.

Curious how this ends? Click here —> Read the rest of this entry »

Batteries Released! Put your links here!

Dateline: Just before Independence Day, 1973, Charleston Naval Base, Charleston, SC, aboard USS CONE (DD-881).

The ship has been to sea for two weeks, playing “Orange Force” (polite way during the Cold War of not offending our enemy by calling our seaborne aggressor units, something other than “red forces.”) surface units, catching up on their Naval Gunfire Support (NGFS) qualifications by sending round after round of 5″/38 cal (54 lb projectiles) at the Carribbean isle of Culebra.

The long weekend was coming, there were 6 third class (“3/c”) midshipmen aboard, the crew had recently returned from a year off the coast of Vietnam, providing real world NGFS services for the Army and Marines, and the stacks needed a good going over with haze gray and the Ship’s company deserved some “R&R” after a hectic operating schedule.

I certainly wasn’t privy to the discussion, being a guy wearing dungarees for 6 weeks, as my first hands on educational experience as a one day to be Naval Officer, but I know this: Someone up the chain of command had the brilliant idea of letting the crew take off early for the really long weekend (Wednesday was the 4th that year), and deemed that the 3rd Class Middies, already with some practical experience handling painting implements in the fire rooms and the interior of the ARSOC launcher, as well as on the Signal Bridge, would be tasked to remain behind and be supervised by the duty section.

So, there we hung in Bos’n’s chairs from the fore and aft stacks, armed with brushes and rollers and prodigious amounts of haze gray, on the morning of the 3rd of July, we went about getting either the Engineer Officer’s of the 1st Lt’s “to do’s” knocked out.

Read the rest of this entry »

Post your stuff! Get exposure!

Lots of real world work today. Maybe I’ll “pen” a story this afternoon to put in here…

In the meantime “Batteries Released!

First of all, mea culpa for not getting this up as the sun went past the yard arm. My apologies. Hammer up those great trackbacks and get some readership from my small stable of transient visitors!

During most weeks, I load up the old mental VHS tapes and surf thru them and see which story tickles my fancy (and hoping it will do the same for your fancy), but I was a little preoccupied.

Just at this moment, I recalled the end of a Combined Federal Campaign on my second ship. There’s a story here about sacrificial giving that fits the theme:

It was the last day and the goal wasn’t met, but it was not much more than propbaly $100 away from a successful mark in my “Fitness Report” (FITREP). Back in those days, such things were “challenges” to be faced and defeated, where,. later in life, I have come to understand it’s about us actually considering much more about the comfort of our fellow man.

AS I stood up on the bridge (we were inport), one of the operations specialist’s came up the centerline ladeer from Combat Information Center (CIC). I knew he was one who’s name wasn’t on the division’s envelope, so I asked him if his “division representative” (the division’s chief petty officer in his case) had given him the chance to donate. He started tap dancing, and I knew the Chief was anyting but a supporter of the CFC campaign and had grudginly taken the assignment, but I could tell he didn’t really want to give anything because of something the Chief had said. I was crest fallen, so near, yet so far from a third campaign of my career going in the “Collected 100%” column on the next FITREP. Then he asked a question:

“Does the money go where you write on the card?” “Yes, Didn’t the Chief tell you that?” “No, he said they let you do that to feel good, but they send it where they want to.”

I assured him the money went as designated. I said it with a false confidence then, but found out later I was correct.

He took a card and filled it out, indicating a pretty good sized dollar amount, particularly for an E3. He turned the contribution card over and wrote one charity for the approved listing, and handed it to me. I met goal. He put his money to something he knew was a good place. Win (Command looked good), win (I looked good), win (for his conscience) and for the charity and those it served, a win, too.

Sorry! No stories today, ‘coz we’re raising money for the wounded troops. Valour-IT Kickoff Post

Link your good stuff (and post this link to Valour-IT at your site!)

Oct 25th. No time for jovial stories, but a day of rememberance of the past.

My Oct 25, 2004 post on the Battle Off Samar

An Afternoon with Dick Rohde, a radioman on the USS SAMUEL B ROBERTS (DE-413) on October 25th, 1944.

My 60th anniversary post about Congressional Medal of Honor Winner Cpl Desmond T. Doss, a conscientious objector who refused to carry a weapon, but saved lives. What did his CMOH earned on Okinawa on May 5th, 1945 have to do with October 25th, 1944? He was ashore at Leyte Gulf that day. The heroic actions of “Taffy 3” saved that landing from being puished back into the sea. Not only that, at Leyte Gulf, Desmond Doss went out onto open ground to save a man shot by a sniper, despite the sniper not being located and killed. No shot was fired at him as he fearlessly went to aid a fallen brother.

Many heroic battles happened on October 25th.

Do you have anything to add? Please use the trackbacks to link to your writings!

I was a young, full of it, Fleet LT(JG) aboard a brand new greyhound of the seas, the USS LEFTWICH (DD-984). I was a plank owner (a member of the commissioning crew), and the Missile Officer. I had the responsibility of the NATO Sea Sparrow Missile (NSSMS) and Harpoon Weapons System (HWS). My Condition III watch station was that of the Ship’s Weapons Coordinator (SWC), where I sat the watch at the OJ-194 Console in the Combat Information Center (CIC), being the control point between the Captain or Tactical Action Officer (TAO) and the weapons systems for air and surface target engagements.

We commissioned in Aug 1979, and in late January, returned to Ingalls Ship Building and Drydock in Pascagoula, MI, for our post-shakedown availability (PSA – read warranty work by the builder after you take the ship out for 6 months of ops) and also for the Restricted Availability (RAV), which would install many upgrades not originally purchased for the hull during the intial Congressional funding. We had sailed from the shipyard on August 26th, 1979 with the NATO missile launcher installed, but the control consoles and some of the computer cabinets, as well as the cable runs, were not. None of the Harpoon system was initally installed, either. The RAV portion of our 5 months in Ingalls would put both of these systems into service.

One day, I was informed that some people would be coming aboard to discuss human factors for some of the weapons systems, one of which would be the Harpoon Weapons System. So, I went about my work until the appointed time, then went to CIC to await the visitors. An older gentleman in regular civilian clothes came in and introduced himself, then asked me if I had any suggestions on the controls for the HWS. I sat in the SWC chair and proceeded to demonstrate one design flaw I particularly thought was stupid. The AN/SWG-1 Harpoon Shipboard Control Launch Control System (HSCLCS) was mounted perpendicular to the SWC console, so you had to turn to your left in the SWC chair to operate the controls. That wasn’t the issue. The power switch was located on the upper left of the console, but underneath a cover plate that had a screw to hold it closed. Still not bad. The procedure for launching included powering the system up (duh!), then securing the cover over the power switch, and you would go about entering the aim point and cell(s) for launching. On the command to shoot, you would rotate the ITL (intend to launch) switch handle (on the lower right of the console) clockwise about 45 degrees and hold it there. At this point, your first visual check was to see if the indicator light for the boosters went from “Safe” to “Arm.” Herein comes the rub. Along with some maintenace lights and switches, the Booster Safe/Armed indicator was also in the well that held the power switch. The cover plate, which was also anodized aluminum, was, quite obviously opaque. So, when you were shooting the bird(s), the first indication to validate was the safe/arm light and it was now obscured.

My sage comment to the visitor, while I sat with my torso twisted markedly to the left: “Whoever invented this was a real bonehead” I stated with the confidence of a fully SWO qualified hot runner, while I demonstrated the problem with now having to open the cover plate to do the job. His very polite (and possibly amused) response: “That was me.”

Ok, so now I find out he’s a retired admiral, now working for Boeing, conducting this human factors/ergonomics survey, and…he had been the first Harpoon Program Manager. Well, that was a moment to pause and shut up and dig no deeper. He was gracious and, as he scribbled on his note pad, he said something like “You’re right, we need to fix that.”

Lesson learned: Just be professional.

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.

Capt Lex sent us to the archives for entertainment a few days ago. One of the linked choices was a story about life at sea and the availability of (fresh) water while keeping oneself in a state of good hygine.

He pointed out, in his fine style of prose, that aviators are regularly pilloried for being the ones who waste so much of the water, that others must suffer. He later learned, when assigned as “Ship’s Company” (that means the aviators share the joy of black shoe life, well, at least get a healthy taste of it), and that it is sometimes malfunctioning machinery, specifically the components used in water production or waste steam/heat recovery are the culprits, but, the ‘Shoe Navy has a cabal that always requires pointing the finger of blame at those who would slip the surly bonds of earth. It’s a union thing, I’m sorry, I gotta stick with the homeboys here.

Here’s my “water hours” story. It was a cool November in 1989. We had taken in all lines several weeks earlier in Charleston, SC and sailed east in our plucky little (453′) FFG. Equipped with two evaporators, and carrying a few over 200 aboard, conversing water was not a huge task, but did require us all to be mindful of only using our share. The CHENG and his A Div Officer did a fine job of maintaining the plant, so we weren’t constantly sweating the laod on this topic.

As we sailed through the Med, enroute Port Said to transit south through the Suez Canal and head for the Persian Gulf. The Chop (Supply Officer), Lt Wayne Aiken, had been on the previous cruise. At the Planning Board for Training the week before the transit of the Canal, Wayne suggested we accelerate the laundry cycle to get all the beding done, then we could make the transit easier on the water use, since you’re not allowed (by Navy sanitation requirements) to make water in enclosed waters, which the Canal certainly was. we copuld then top off the fresh water tanks, and shut down the evaporators at the 12 mile limit off of Egypt, yet still have plenty for food service and normal showers on the 24 hour transit, with reserves while the evaps caught up on the other side of Port Suez. I agreeed and the department heads and the command senior chief went about working up the details.

Over the next few days, the plan went like clockwork. The sheets got done and a few of the divisions got their dungarees taken care off off schedule. Early on the day of our scheduled arrival at Port Said (the north end of the canal), we had launched the helo on a Dawn Patrol, and brought them back aboard before we enetered Egyptian territorial waters (12 NM). I recall being on the bridge and, in addition to monitoring our navigational approach (I was navigator, too), I kept an ear out for the communications between the helo and CIC to make sure we didn’t break boundries.

We headed into the anchorage, the Engineering Officer of the Watch (EOOW) letting the bridge know the evaporators were “wrapped up” as the Officer of the Deck (OOD) completed the entering port checklist. We anchored about an hour later and the CHENG called up, saying we were losing fresh water fast. Immediately, the chain of command was sent around the berthing spaces, looking for running showers, or other “appliances” in the heads. They all reported back, that nothing was running, and there were no findings of pooled water in the spaces. We were still using water. This was a real problem, more frustrating as we had taken the time to make a plan just to keep a problem like this from happeneing.

More hiking around the ship. Nothing, until the Ops Boss, LT Tom Strother, found a garden hose, draped over the side of the flight deck, running at full output. He also found an airman from the helo detachment, with a long handled brush, dutifully scrubbing down the helo, as was standard procedure, after the flight. The problem was, he was supposed to have a nozzle on the garden hose, so he would only use the water required.

In this case, we lost almost half of our fresh water over the side, courtesy of the well intentioned maintained, keeping the risk of corrosion on the very expensive flying machine of HSL-44 Det 4. Marty Keany and I had an interesting chat a few moments later.

We regrouped, we did make water in the Canal, but it was super chlorinated, which, is it’s own reward.

When I checked off the Command, one of the helo pilots, Carl Bush, was a great cartoonist, drew a cartoon of me. The view was from behind me, sitting at my desk. The 1MC (General Announcing System) was blaring “WATER HOURS ARE NOW IN EFFECT!” and I had a cartoon thinking bubble saying “All RIGHT!” in response. There were other details, like an overflowing In Basket, and an empty Out Basket.

Yes, Capt Lex, it was the aviators this time.