Good afternoon to you. Hope the holidays are treating you well.
Just about wrapped up 03.
Have you ever been on a ship that was refueling at sea, while underway in the dark?
I got a chance one time when I was on the USS Belleau Wood LHA 3 in the Navy. It was cool. The oil tender came up beside us. The bosun shot a line across to the tender. They pulled a cable across and set up a pulley system to pull the fuel line across. After we got connected we steamed side by side for hours getting our tank filled up.
Two parts stick with me about that experience. It was really pretty and there was some good music. Sounds like your high school prom you say?
For my money that refueling was pretty and had some good music. There were lights on the lines between the ships that danced and glowed as the ships steamed on in the night and the bosun mates got to play the Beatles "It's a Hard Day's Night" on the PA. It was cool.
One time some Marines gave me a ride in their amphibious tank vehicle on a nice sunny day off the coast of California. I'm not sure what those vehicles are called but they have a water jet type motor like you see on ski boats that shoots a big rooster tail of water into the air. The Marines were buzzing around and trying to spray each other with their rooster tails. It was a fun ride.
The ship was pretty quiet unless we had the Marines on board. We had a crew of maybe 800 sailors but the ship could hold maybe 2000 Marines or so. When the Marines came on board things got more exciting. As sailors we were used to the conditions on the ship and knew each other as crew members. The Marines came from land based activities and were used to more open space. It worked out fine..but tensions would get a little higher when the Marines were on board. You'd see a few fights between them....it was just a lot more crowded.
One of my various jobs as a sailor was movie projectionist. We showed movies in a big room up near the top of the ship. It was open and had folding chairs for people to sit on. Picture this.....
I'm in charge of the movie and the room is full of sailors, and Marines who aren't all that happy to be on board to begin with.
It was a projector with the big reels and it had a latch for holding those big reels in place.
Do you see where this is going?
I start the projector and a couple of minutes into the movie the reel comes off and rolls down the aisle with the film coming off in huge spirals. Whooooaaaaa baaaabbby I had some mad people on my hands. Sometimes I have sort of a natural clown tendency. I think people sort of relaxed watching me screw around and sweat trying to rewind all the film on that reel.
Besides my Jerry Lewis run's a projector act on the ship...I won the Stoker Award for something good. I know it wasn't stoking coal since the ship burned diesel.
One time I tightened a fuse holder on the bridge during night air ops. The loose holder was causing intermittent electrical power on the bridge with aircraft in the air waiting to land/takeoff. Not good. I had to work on the box hot. Luckily my natural clown stayed away.
Another time the back door of the ship was stuck down and we needed to load on amphibous ships and vehicles. That door weighed about 2000 tons and was always causing us trouble. The back end of the ship was designed to be filled with ballast and sink down so we could float small craft in and out. The problem was the seawater would mess up the switches on that door. I figured out a way to bypass the switches and get the door up. I heard later that our sister ship the USS Tarawa had done something similar and dropped the door causing some major damage.
I was a peacetime sailor...I just hope that all the real soldiers, sailors, airmen, airwomen, and marines know how much we appreciate what they do.
God Bless You All.
