Wednesday, April 12, 2017

DOWN TO THE SEA IN SHIPS

In November of 63, I finally went aboard a Navy warship. An aircraft carrier USS Constellation CVA-64. It was docked at North Island in Coronado CA across the bay from San Diego.
  By now, I was a Missile Technician second class with a hashmark on my uniform, for every four years in the US Canoe Club you added a hashmark. I don't know the official name for them, probably service stripes, but everyone called them hashmarks. When I came on board, everyone assumed I had considerable sea time, which I didn't. No one asked me what my prior duty stations were and I never volunteered. A school, C school, shore duty and B school weren't real duty stations. I kept my big mouth closed and listened a lot and soon could talk a pretty good game as a real sailor. The adventure was finally beginning.
    I was very glad that I was now actually a crewmember of a ship but I didn't like life aboard a birdfarm. There are several navys. There is the submarine Navy, the battleship/cruiser navy, the gator Navy who transport the Marine jarheads to the beach head, the CBs, the aviation Navy and then the real navy, destroyers.   
    There are actually two vastly different Navys on a carrier, or bird farm. There are the black shoe guys who run the engines and make the electricity the engineers, or snipes. The bosun's mates, gunner's mates, signalmen, radarmen and Missile Technicians and all the others who make the ship run, supply the food and supplies are also black shoes.
    Then there are the aviation personell for which the birdfarm exists. In all fairness, it is their ship. Why the name brownshoe for aviation you may ask? I'm glad that you did. Pilots and other aviation officers wear green uniforms with brown shoes, hence the name. The captain of an aircraft carrier, by law, is a Naval Aviator. If you are an aviator you can't get promoted to Admiral if you hadn't had command of a birdfarm and you can't have command of a birdfarm unless you had command of a deep draft vessel. 
    Deep draft vessels are mostly supply ships that carry food and other stores, oilers that carry the fuel that the ships and aircraft need to have and ammunition ships that keep us supplied with munitions and bombs. Any time we went along side of a supply it was a good bet that the skipper of the auxiliary was a naval aviator. Naval Aviators are brave, smart men but quite frankly, they don't know shit about commanding a ship. Especially an aircraft carrier.
   On the destroyer one day over in WestPac we were coming along side an ammo ship. Mount 52, our after five inch gun was pointing up at an odd angle with a fire hose  stock in the muzzle splaying water all over the place. The skippers usually chat to one another via bullhorns and the brown shoe ammo ship captain asked what was up with the after gun mount. Our skipper hollered back "hot gun". The brown shoe usually has a black shoe commander right at his elbow. We could see him ask the black shoe what the hell a hot gun was. The other officer explained that a hot gun is when a projectile gets stuck in the barrel due to overheating. The gun gets a hose stuck down in it's barrel  to cool it down. When cooled down, a gunners mate sticks a long brass rod down the barrel and drives the projectile back down and out through the breach. A task I would be reluctant to do. The ammo ship did an emergency breakaway and got as much water between us as fast as he could.
   But I digress.
   Life on the carrier is like being on a cruise ship. You can eat twenty one hours a day. There is a one hour break between meals and they are back in business. There was closed circuit TV and you could go up on the oh eleven deck, IE 11 stories up and watch flight ops. It is an amazing sight to see but pretty soon you realize that you don't want to know what is going on "on the roof". Also like a cruise ship, it gets crowded. With an airgroup aboard, there is over 6500 sailors aboard. I was volunteered to be the Messdeck Master at Arms. Essentially the cop who keeps the peace and enforces good behavior and manners on the messdeck. Twelve hours on and twelve hours off. It was long hours but being I was bunked with the commissarymen, the real cooks, I and we ate real well.    
I spent about six months on the bird farm with a MidPac cruise to Hawaii. Did a few missile shots when one day I was summoned to the ships personell office. I had to have one of my strikers guide me to the office being the ship was so large. We passed a big compartment which looked like a Walmart. I asked the kid who was an older hand on the ship and he replied that it was the ships store. I said what the hell was that place back by where we slept sold cigarettes and lighters and watches and he replied that it was like a  quickey mart. This huge place was the ship's store. I was told at the personell office that I was going to new construction in Seattle and I was needed in three days.
   I packed my seabag and left the ship, went to where my wife was working and gave her the news. I didn't know how long I'd be there or where the ship was going to be home ported so we had our furniture and other belongings stored in San Diego the lucky wife went to her parents in Cleveland and I was Seattle bound.  





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