COLLISION AT SEA

We refueled every other night while up north in the Gulf of Tonkin off of the coast of North Vietnam. We got pretty proficient at nighttime underway refueling after awhile as practice makes perfect. 

In February of 1966 we came along side of USS Navasota, a fleet oiler, to refuel. We came alongside at about 2330, 11:30 PM, to refuel. I was on my condition three watch station up in the gun director the highest manned point on the ship as Gun Director Officer. Being we were refueling there was a zero probability of  any firing of our guns and it gets really cold way up there in the gun director, even in Vietnam, I elected to climb down off of my perch and try to keep warm inside of the director. I had the 8 to 12 watch and was due to be relieved at 2345 as is standard Navy custom but watches are not changed in the middle of underway evolutions so I made myself as comfortable as possible. About 0030, half past midnight, I felt the ship speed up as she broke away from the port side of the oiler.

Almost immediately, I felt the ship shudder and lean over to port as she would in a high speed turn. Up in the gun director, there is a gyrocompass repeater. The compass didn’t show any change in course. I asked myself  how can we be in a high speed turn and not change course? The answer is obviously it is an impossibility. I slid open my little hatch and stuck my head outside. By then, we were laying dead in the water. I looked around and saw much white light and what looked like a partial cutaway profile of a ship.

During all of this time I hadn’t heard one word on the primary battle circuit which the gun director is on. I asked “Did the Bass hit us?” The Bass was what we called USS Brinkley Bass our running mate who was refueling off of the starboard side of the oiler, Tanker. The telephone circuit went crazy with things like “Where the hell have you been?” and other excited remarks.

I obviously had been up in the director the whole time but there were a few things that happened, and didn’t happen. As we broke away from the tanker most everyone noticed a 2250 ton destroyer heading right for us at twenty, or so, knots. The Officer of the Deck told the helmsman to make a hard left turn and told the Boatswain's Mate of the Watch to sound the collision alarm and pass the word to “standby for a collision to starboard” over the 1MC, the ships public address system. The 1MC has several switches on it. There is a below deck switch, a topside switch, an officer’s country switch and an engineering switch foor the snipes down in the boiler rooms. In his anxiety, the BMOTW only turned on the below decks switch. To half of the crew the event was a completely unexpected surprise.

The guys going on the midwatch were down in the mess deck getting a bite of midrats, midnight watch evening snack. When they heard the word to standby for a starboard collision all heads swiveled to the right and they watched the bow of a destroyer come through the bulkhead, wall. Everyone else was dazed and confused. The CPO quarters were on the starboard side of the ship and all of the chiefs headed to port. They ran into the officer’s country which was on the port side and opened the first door to go out on the port deck. Trouble was the first door was a stateroom and the officer who was not on watch was on his bunk reading a book. His door burst open and a half dozen CPOs ran into his room, looked around, swore like sailors and ran out. The poor lieutenant had no clue at that point of time of what the hell was going on. The snipes down in the hole didn’t also know anything until the shit hit the fan. Fortunately our ship was very new and made of  better steel than the WW2 era Bass. The bass just bounced off of our hull.

The Captain was in his sea cabin when he realized something was amiss before the collision. He ran onto the bridge and hollered “I have the con” and ordered a hard turn to starboard to deflect the imminent blow of the other ship and then we went to General Quarters, battle stations. We were pretty uneasy about whether we would sink in the middle of the night.   

The next morning I was back on my 0800 to 1200 condition three watch in the gun director. A few damagecontrolmen from Navasota the oiler had been heloed to Bass in the middle of the night to lend a hand with keeping the ship afloat. In the morning, they were being heloed back to Navasota. They went right over Waddell and about five miles ahead the helicopter went into the drink. The OOD on watch ordered flank, wartime full, speed ahead. The captain had been up all night assessing the condition of his ship and had just hit his rack when the ship speeded up. He ran out on the bridge and asked “What the hell is going on”? The OOD told him that a helo went down ahead of us and we were going into recovery mode. Once again the captain hollered “I have the con” and ordered all engines stopped. The OOD was confused and asked why. The captain replied that we had just experienced a collision and we had no real idea of the extent of our damage. If we were to scream up to the crash sight and back the engines down hard, it could shake the ship apart. So we coasted right through the crash site and watched 12 wet sailors  swim for their lives to get away from our moving ship.

Being I was up in the director, I could see most everything clearly and helped direct the rescue by another helicopter. Twelve went down and only nine were saved. They were flown over to the nearest aircraft carrier and checked out in sick bay, given a few shots of medicinal brandy and put on another chopper to go home.

For the second time that day, I watched them fly over us to get back to their ship. For the second time that day, I watched the chopper go down. We were much closer to this crash site and a got a good view of the whole FUBARed mess. The bird settled into the water but then it rolled to port. The blades were still slowly turning and when they hit the water the blades ripped the top of the bird off. I couldn’t actually tell how many got out of this second crash of the day but when a third chopper hovered over them and dropped a sling down, they gave the helo the finger. There was an ocean going tug out in the gulf to screw with the Russian trawler who used to try to screw with us and the guys in the drink pointed to the tug. That was the last helicopter ride that they were going to take that day.

After all of this excitement with the collision and the helo crashes several times somebody would say “What else can go wrong?” and everybody would holler, “Don’t ask, we don’t want to know?