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COMSUBBBS
Posts: 3202
Location: Alexandria, Virginia | Subject: Night Steaming...Or Steaming on Station
Anyone remember the notations in OP ORDERS that read to the effect...FINEX 1900...COMMENCE STEAMING ON STATION until 0800 COMMEX MORNING OF______." So at what is now 7PM to us.....Nobody gave a rats' poo-poo about the designated course. The radar operator periodically checked the PPI scope for the berg that knocked off the Titanic, the Lost Continent of Atlantis, remnants of the D-Day invasion fleet....floating K-Marts...and large chunks of Texas that might have broken loose and were posing threats to navigation. The helmsman's inattention threw pretzel knots in the wake and the lookouts and OOD held a three man bulls**t jamboree on the bridge....You could wander all over the ocean until 0300 when someone woke up the Quartermaster who took a LORAN cut and laid out a course and speed to get you back to the ballpark for the beginning of the game. We used to get the helmsman to "toss in a loop"....that's to bring the helm over to make a slow turn that will eventually complete 360 degrees throwing a circular loop in the ordered course....only detectable on a DRT tracing. Watch officers engaged in giving instruction to bored out of their skulls lookouts, normally failed to notice that the moon's location was circling the ship....They also had difficulty in figuring out why when the 0300 LORAN position was plotted in relation to our 1900 position our speed over the ground was way off his initial projection. Of course, you could make a hughmongus el mistako, if your OOD was a mustang a-la Roy Ator...The dumb bastard who tried to throw in a loop on a prior service officer, could be relieved in a heartbeat so he could lay to the bridge and have molten lava dumped in his shorts....Bad thing about prior service officers...they understood raghats and took a lot of the smartass fun out of life. But they are the reason a lot of idiots became decent sailors....Them and the CPO's...We spent too much time trying to worm or way around them, hoodwink the bastards and tapdance past their arcane bulls**t regulations and Yo-Ho-Ho old navy horsemanure...to recognize the thanks we owed them for the lessons they taught us that stood us in good stead the rest of our lives. DEX
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Master and Commander
Posts: 1602
| Subject: RE: Night Steaming...Or Steaming on Station
I was only on active duty for eighteen months and got out early because Tricky Dick let us reservists out early in '68.
I was only on one boat and it was diesel. Dex you make a comment about your boat doing the loop and making that slow circle. On my boat the helmsman did it very rarely often usually around midnight under starless skies with no contacts around.
I think besides weather and lack of contacts the helmsman would pick a night when the officer and the two lookouts would get into lots of conversation.
I was just wondering was this common for most boats, again my experience is limited, but I saw it happen every so often on the midnight watch. Nobody to the best of my knowledge would have ever tried this underwater (I think).
Also I remember seeing a trim party set up for less liked diving officers and have heard this was common on other boats. These incidents did not happen in Westpac. Weekly operations around Pearl was were these practices were normal - by normal maybe I'd personally witness it about every three months of local ops. Did nukes do this also? Also were there other normal shnanigans that I missed?
Edited by Gil 2007-08-08 4:04 PM
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Master and Commander
Posts: 1107
Location: Tucson AZ | Subject: RE: Night Steaming...Or Steaming on Station
Gil - 2007-08-08 3:02 PM
...
Also I remember seeing a trim party set up for less liked diving officers and have heard this was common on other boats. These incidents did not happen in WestPac. Weekly operations around Pearl was were these practices were normal - by normal maybe I'd personally witness it about every three months of local ops. Did nukes do this also? Also were there other normal shenanigans that I missed?
In my experience (all nooks, back in the 60s/70s) these amusements were common - with the exception of 'sneaking in a circle' by the helmsman; we didn't do surface steaming for the most part, and navigation equipment was too precise. Nowadays flashing lights and sirens probably go off if one deviates from the dialed-in auto-pilot course or depth!
Trim parties were de-rigeur, though there wasn't much of an effect if you tried it on a boomer. Fun and games with sound-powered growler phones were standard entertainment ... and occasionally someone would pull off bogus MC announcements, such as "This is a drill, this is a drill!" followed by the sound of a drill motor being run. |
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Master and Commander
Posts: 1889
Location: Patterson, New York | Subject: RE: Night Steaming...Or Steaming on Station
Trim Party - even the big Polaris Boats could be subject to a trim party if you got enough guys in the forward torpedo room. The engine room aft was kind of off limits for clowning around.
Thomas
Edited by Thomas Courtien 2007-08-08 7:45 PM
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Night Steaming...Or Steaming on Station
