Some Army guy in another thread claimed to like Sea Stories.
Let’s do it! We’ll just need to keep it simple. Army guys, need I say more?
I’ve got a million of ’em. Mostly true.
Points for knowing what a P-38 is.
I Love Sea Stories.
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My Dad was a SeaBee in WWII. I can’t tell his story like he can, but the end result of a liberty was the sale of an Admiral’s wife to a group of Marines at a party. (The lady was unharmed, and in fact, was rather amused by the whole business.)
If the lady found it amusing, unfortunately, her husband didn’t. Only the deepest and most profound conspiracy that ever existed keep a bunch of sailors and Marines from being court-martialed.
My dad swore he heard the story second-hand…
“my squiddly-diddlies”–?
Well, that seals it. I am now actually at a loss for words.
Kudos for leaving an Air Cav dude speechless.
Usually it takes a few bottles of scotch.
TSO has said before that he thinks I’m nuts, but I honestly like the pound cake in MREs. I also swapped out my P-38 for a P-51 on my key ring…at least until I sat on it and it ripped the ass of my pants open….good times…
http://www.amazon.com/GI-Large-P-51-Can-Opener/dp/B00176IMW4
I was a big fan of the deadly combo: Beans & Franks, chased by the fruitcakes. After 3 days in the field, I could generate 100mcf of crippling gas on command. The dumps were literally spectacular, a day-glo orange mound so radioactive looking I’d have to cordon off the cat-hole with engineer tape.
An odd thing: All of the cakes were made by “Eunice King’s Kitchen, Sherman, TX”, but when they went to MRE’s, I guess she didn’t get in on the action. And the MRE “cakes” suck badly. Apparently someone from the SF forum tracked the business down: http://www.professionalsoldiers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24252&page=2
The 3-ring circus in the middle of an X-rated Disneyland that lies just the other side of the Shit River Bridge.
For those who have been there, no explanation is necessary.
For those who have not, no explanation is possible.
But as far as as-sea, “No shit, there I was” stories:
PACEX-89. Largest Naval mobilization since WWII. We’re out in the middle of God knows where playing the bad guys (having already sunk Nimitz twice.) We’re transiting at VERY high SOA, and need to come to PD for broadcast and a fix. We knew there was weather around when we dove, but what we didn’t realize was that we were right under a Cat 4 super typhoon.
Our first indication something was amiss was when we were taking nearly 10 degree rolls. AT 400 FEET. This is NOT normal. By the time we got to 150 feet, we were doing 35-40 degree rolls. My LPO and I were sitting on opposite sides of the “horseshoe” behind Maneuvering and looking down at each other on alternate rolls.
The OOD then gets the brilliant idea to KEEP GOING TO PD. He got (we think–couldn’t really tell because the waves were estimated at 45-50 feet and kept bashing the fairwater planes as we broached) as far as 90 feet before the CO quite literally FELL into the Control Room and told the OOD to get the boat back down to 400 feet and try again once clear of the fucking storm.
Sparky,
I never made it to the PI, but I’m pretty certain that the bars in Panama we visited could hold their own with any of the LBFM’s at Olangapo.
Hell, at least half the clubs we visited the first few days there turned out to be on the Air Force’s “off-limits” list. The Officer giving us the welcome brief at Howard AFB was aghast that we’d been there and no one was killed, knifed, married or afflicted with some virulent disease. 🙂
Sea Story: Post USS Pueblo and just post Tet ’68. Supposedly heading for Japan from Vietnam when we got orders to head for Korea. Quick stop in Pusan then a coupla weeks playing chicken with the Russians.
Really, Running at UNREP distances with a Russian Tin Can for miles practicing “freedom of the seas” or some such.
Was tense at first, but eventually we were waving at each other, taking pictures of them taking pictures of us, etc.
Had pictures for years, but they disappeared during some move so you’ll just have to trust me – This Ain’t No Shit.
One more, from my Father’s days. In December 1968 he was a PN1 on the USS Turner (DDR-834) when they made an “excursion” into the Black Sea. The CO had made him his bridge phone talker during GQ early in the deployment, according to Dad because “you know when to actually repeat the words coming out of my mouth”. As such he was privy to some very tense moments staring down the Soviet Black Sea Fleet. Years later, Dad went to college. In a history class, the professor began discussing the Black Sea excursion.
He looked at my Dad and said, “Mr. “Sngr”, do you think those Navy ships were armed and ready to fight?”
Dad: “You’re damned right were armed and ready.”
Prof: “What do you mean “we””?
Dad: “Hell, I was there on the Turner.”
Prof: “Class, I’m turning this portion over to Mr. “Sngr””.
I still have my P-38 on my key ring. It’s been there for 30 years.
Spaghetti wasn’t too bad. We would prop it on the truck exhaust or on the exhaust of the 5kw generators we towed to get it good and hot. Just for fun we would pop a small slit in the top of a can with a P-38 and toss it out of the rig at night for those German boar hogs to crunch.
So…
I’m lookin at this old German pistol and thinking…
NAH
NEVER
MIND,
R
Sea Story: Or how NOT to go through a hatch. I don’t remember the ship’s name. NOT because of the incident.
We were operating well up into the Gulf of Tonkin either during a DESOTO (sigint) mission or doing RESCAP with a chopper on the fantail.
Real GQs were a regular thing, sometimes to pick up aircrew, sometimes because of threats.
Either way the ship drivers would usually go to flank speed while the alarm was sounding.
I’m running full tilt forward through a passageway and jumped through a water-tight hatch when the ship drops. I was about 2 or 3 inches too tall and too slow to duck.
About ten minutes later I came to and continued on to my station. The good thing was… although I didn’t need stitches there was enough damage that I didn’t get reamed for being late.
So, there we were- it was nearly three months after the bombing of the Cole, and port calls had been suspended by the navy, until they could review what had happened and develop procedures to prevent another incident. The ban was lifted, and we were set to drop anchor in Spain. Spanish authorities informed our CO that they had given Greenpeace permission to protest our ship. They were scheduled to protest for an hour.
Reactor department ran routine fire fighting training that day, lighting off a few OBA training canisters in the process (for you non- navy types: essentially, we opened some metal bottles containing chemicals that make a large boom when submerged in water) before mooring. The Dub drafted too deep for the harbor, so we had to anchor about a mile out to sea.
About a half hour later, we were getting to our mooring spot. Greenpeace then fires up the stupidity, protesting our eath-killing nuclear power by buzzing around in 2-stroke powered rafts, leaving thin sheens of oil in their wake. The GP giant sailboat/yacht thing is there too, with pretentious assbags screaming condescending slogans at us through a bullhorn.
Well, the Dub was the first capitol ship to hit a foreign port after the Cole, and fleet told our skipper to be prepared to drop the hammer. So Skip ordered “condition waterfall”, meaning we had every weatherdeck sponson manned with at least one fire hose team. He also ordered the fellas in gunnery div. to set up Ma Deuces on the catwalks- about 30 of them per broadside.
Well, an hour in to their protest, and they don’t stop like they’re supposed to. They have a raft parked under our starboard anchor (it weighs 30 tons), and the hippies buzzing our ship are getting closer with every pass. Warnings start sounding over the announcing circuit. Then horns start blaring. Then they taste the hoses.
A two and a half inch fire hose spouting 150# seawater does a helluva job knocking burning debris apart, and requires a team of guys to handle. It also does a number on douchebags in rafts.
Feeling secure in their raincoats, and overconfident from only recieving droplets from the spray, one raft pulls a little too close to the sponson I’m on. The guy manning the bail gives ’em a dose of full on ghostbusters hitting the marshmallow man stream; not the half-throttle spray they had been sprinkling them with previously. The force of the spray recoils the hose team, and a jet of fuck you hits the guy in the bow of the raft dead in the gut, just as he launched into a pretentious diatribe about pollution. The guy folds like he was hit with a sledgehammer, tumbling back into the guy running the raft’s motor. They quickly speed off, and learn their lesson. There will be no more attempted fireside chats with the assholes on the forward shorepower sponson.
Well after the scheduled end of their protest, GP is still there. The Dub has taken to doing back standard, then ahead 2/3, in what was percieved by GP as a laughable attempt to shake the hippies from under our anchors. Maneuvering 4 1/2 acres of steel away from a raft in a confined space is indeed a futile gesture, but the skipper isn’t looking to get away. He’s sending a message. Spanish port authority reads him loud and clear, and opens up on the guys under the anchor with bean bags. They take the hits. Port authority uses their boats to try and create space between the Dub and GP, but it doesn’t go well. There’s just too many GP rafts.
At this moment, I leave my sponson, as I need to get some things done before watch. Just as I step into the hatch to berthing, I’m nearly run over by a blue streak sprinting past me. It’s one of the guys from my division. A guy notorious for not giving a damn about anything. His right arm was covered in an asbestos sleeve, and he was clutching a lit-off OBA canister. There’s a crusty deck department chief sprinting after him like that scene from T2, screaming obscenities, and falling behind quickly. I laugh it off, and go on watch.
GP eventually leaves, and the ship moors without further incident.
Later that evening, I see the guy who was running earlier. I ask him what that was all about, and he tells me, “I was looking for a place to drop that canister in the water. All of the sponsons were full of people, so I went forward to the foc’s’le. A deck department chief was there, briefing his guys on the anchor evolution, when he saw me. His eyes immediately went to the canister. I said ‘oops, wrong hatch’, let out, and that crazy bastard chased me.”
The idea, like some Rube Goldbergian death machine, was that he’d drop the canister in the water. It would go boom, and spook the boys manning the .50s. They would open up at GP, who would certainly get the hell out of there, and then we could drop anchor. It was a stunningly bold plan, but somehow, looking back on it, he doubted would have been able to just drop anchor after that. That deck chief had saved RE division from creating an international incident.
A quick one. Before leaving port for a patrol, an SSBN does a mini trial that includes a “rig for sea” exercise, also known as “angles and dangles” where the boat does rapid depth changes to make sure that everything is tied down.
On a 640 class SSBN, the longest passageway is in the middle level between the missile compartment and the torpedo room. During one angles and dangle event, one of my fellow missile techs decided to grab the blanket off his bunk and ride from the missile compartment to the torpedo room during a long dive.
The plan was good in theory, but he forgot that there is also an escape hatch in the deck between the middle and lower level. As he and the blanket were achieving terminal velocity, the hatch handle partially lifted, and he was given what could politely called an anal episiotomy. We could hear the doc laughing in his office the whole time he was treating the poor kid.
WWF supermatch on a 637 class boat after field day. M and RL Divisions against E and RC Divisions. Even in the RC Tunnel compartment, it was CROWDED. Chiefs and officers were allowed to participate, but while the officers did, the Chiefs didn’t. Old farts.
@66- My old berthing was right next to dental, and underneath personnel. One particularly drunk night in Abu-Dhabi, three other electricians and I formed a commando-style flopping squad. We hit an ELT on the mess decks. We went into RC div. berthing and flopped all that we saw, we hit another ELT outside of dosimetry on our way aft, and then went into M/RM berthing. Bad move. As it turns out, they were having a N-64 “Goldeneye” tournament in the lounge. They paused the game, and just looked at us. We stared down about 30 mechanics, chose one, and tried to flop him before we got fucked up. Didn’t work so well for us. Backfired so spectacularly, in fact, that after punishing us, both M and RM divisions racked out their guys, mustered in full strength, and invaded RE division berthing for a brawl.
The dental tech on duty got freaked out because the bulkheads were buckling and called the MAA. The MAAs just stood at the top of the berthing hatch, asking us to stop. They wouldn’t dare come down.
The thing that broke it up was when one crafty MAA racked out the RE div LCPO- a short, stocky senior chief who was built like a brick shithouse. Senior came charging down the ladder in his boxers and t-shirt, and literally threw the first guy he came to face first about 10 feet into the lounge phone, shattering it into a million pieces. The “ding” noise got people’s attention, while the profanity-laced tirade about our impending death for getting him racked out held it. He flipped on the lights and started looking at faces and taking names. Everyone scattered like cockroaches, bolting towards the other hatch, or diving into already occupied racks three deep to avoid the hand of god. That was the last time we pulled that shit.
This is a short “NO SHITTER” (meaning it really happended): I was arrested for completely destroying bar in Thialand. The bar was made of bamboo. I was thrown into a jail … made of bamboo. I easily broke out of said jail, made it to the beach, and swam a mile back to the ship. 1987 WESTPAC and PERSIAN GULF CRUISE.
No shit. There I was, knee deep in grenade pins . . . . (smile)
Just kidding. But seriously: this is a first-person account. I was there. Names have been changed in the narrative below.
This happened sometime during the first 10 days or so of November 1983. Interesting times – that was about 2 months after the Soviets downed KAL 007, about a month after the Rangoon bombing, and about three weeks after both URGENT FURY and the Marine Barracks bombing in Beirut. And as I later found out, it was also only a few months after another incident that still might not be public. Yeah, the APF (asshole pucker factor) in South Korea was kinda high about then.
And it was also right before President Reagan visited Camp Liberty Bell on the Korean DMZ on November 13, 1983.
I had just arrived in Korea. I was assigned to a unit involved in supporting Reagan’s visit to the DMZ.
I was assigned to Operations, but the outgoing guy I was replacing was still there. So he decided to use visit prep as part of the handover process. Made sense, actually, since I’d be seeing a lot of the places and people I’d have to work with over the next year.
We’d been all over the Western Corridor that day by jeep. There were four of us: myself, the guy I was replacing, a KATUSA (Korean Augmentation to the US Army) soldier, and our senior Korean technician civilian (employed by the US Army).
The KATUSA, SGT Oh, was our driver. It had been a helluva long day, and he was so fatigued he couldn’t safely drive. Our Korean civilian, Mr. Kim, also had a license, so he was driving.
We made our last stop of the day: Third ROK Army (TROKA) Headquarters, near Uijongbu. The POTUS was going to visit that location, so that meant we had business there also.
Darkness comes early at that latitude in November. It was well after dark when we pulled up to the gate of the TROKA HQ compound.
Mr. Kim stopped the vehicle near the gate. We sat there, engine idling, lights on.
That turned out to be a mistake.
Floodlights came on illuminating us. We sat there while an illuminated sign came on in Hangul (the proper name for the Korean language). It stayed on a while, then it went out and was replaced by a second sign.
We sat and waited.
The second sign went off, then a third came on. Soon, the third sign began to flash. Then we heard a voice in Hangul shouting at us.
At this point, Mr. Kim laughed nervously. The guy I was replacing turned to him and said, “What’s he saying Mr. Kim? What’s he saying?” Mr. Kim replied: “Oh, he say you better go talk to him or he shoot us.”
Mr. Kim was a very bright man. But apparently he was kinda tired too.
We were in an old M151A1 “Jeep”. The M151A1 had kill switches for both engine and lights on the dash between the driver and front-seat passenger. Thank God the guy I was replacing had the presence of mind to quickly reach over and hit both kill switches immediately.
After a short exchange of words in Hangul, Mr. Kim and the guy I was replacing (he was the senior vehicle occupant) went to the guard house to talk to the guards. (The signs had said, in order: “Turn off lights”, “Turn off Engine”; and “Senior occupant approach guard post”. ) Sgt Oh and I remained with the vehicle. The floodlights went off.
We sat there for a few minutes. As my eyes readjusted to the darkness, I began to make out a couple of things I hadn’t seen before.
Like the M60 machine-gun position on the left side of the entrance to the TROKA Compound. It had a crew. The weapon was aimed at us, locked and loaded. There was no blank adapter on the end of the weapon.
On the right side of the entrance was a two-man fighting position. It had two ROK soldiers in it. Both had M16s locked and loaded aimed at us. No blank adapters there, either.
Another minute – maybe – and I’m pretty sure we’d all have been toast due to friendly fire.
Mr. Kim and the guy I was replacing came back to the vehicle. We went onto the TROKA compound and did our business. Then we went back to our compound.
And to our credit, no one had to stop and change their shorts on the way home.
Pattaya? Was there twice. I believe it. My first time there we were given the port brief. High on the list of no-nos was getting in the ring and doing Thai boxing. Of course one of our guys did.
And it was fucking hi-LARIOUS to see a 35-lb guy kicking his ass all over the ring.