HOT GUN

On Waddell back in Nam we fired our two 5"- 54 guns a lot, primarily for Naval Gunfire Support protecting our Marines on the beach, land. I forgot the exact number but I think it was around 5,800 rounds that we fired on that cruise. That is a lot of five inch projectiles. We had to go back to the Subic Bay shipyard often to get regunned. After a number of rounds were fired, the barrels wore out and needed to be replaced. This is reguning. While on the gunline, we were always chasing some ammunition ship up and down the coast to get more ammo. 

In our navy only a Naval Aviator, a pilot, can command an aircraft carrier. Also if you were an ambitious naval aviator and wanted to be an admiral some day, you had to previously command a carrier. Catch 21 is that one can not command a carrier if he, or she, has not commanded a deep draft vessel. Oilers. tankers, and troop transports, refrigerator ships and ammunition ships are, in fact, deep draft vessels so most of these big lumbering unglamorous ships have brown shoes as captains. FYI brown shoes are aviation types and black shoes are "real" sailors. These senior pilots are all very good airplane drivers but don't know squat about ship handling therefore get to learn about ships on an auxillery. The executive officers on these big slugs are always blackshoe commanders. Somebody on the bridge needs to actually be in charge. Pilots need to have some gimmick while replenishing a man of war. Some highline one of their crew to clean our windshield. My favorite was the captain who used to put the messenger line over to us by driving it over with a golf ball.

One day while we were about to start taking on ammo I saw the captain of the ammo ship point to our mount 52, our after five inch. I could see him asking his XO why we had a firehose stuffed down the gun's barrel and spewing water all over hell. The old salt blackshoe must have told the skipper that we had a "hot gun". A hot gun is a very dangerous condition. A hot gun is when the gun fires but the projectile doesn't leave the gun's jagged used up barrel. SOP, standard operating procedure, is to quickly cool the barrel down with copious amounts of sea water via a fire hose and then when the gun is "safe", some poor gunner's mate has to stick a brass drift, rod, down the barrel and drive this hot bomb back down into the gun mount without setting it off. It is actually not an uncommon practice but I was glad it wasn't me who had to do it.

Back on the ammo ship's bridge the skipper called over to our captain and asked him if our mount 52 is a hot gun, 

When our skipper confirmed that it was indeed a hot gun I saw the only emergency break away in my navy carrier. We were steaming side by side at twenty knots connected by high lines and that big tub cast us loose and rang up flank speed to put  distance between us.

And this is no shit.