Wetherhorn

When I finished my intercept control course I headed for California to join my ship, the helicopter carrier USS Valley Forge. The ship was in drydock, undergoing a major refit. There wasn’t any space available in navy housing ashore, so I lived on board. It wasn’t a great experience. The whole ship was filled with dirt and dust almost all the time. The officers galley was closed, so we all ate on board a sort of houseboat where some of the crew also slept.

I was assigned as the division officer for OE division. That’s the group of electronic technicians that maintain all the radios, radars, and electronic equipment on the ship.   My immediate boss was the Electronics Materiel Officer. He was former enlisted sailor who worked his way up the ladder. I found him to be a superb mentor in leadership and understanding electronics. I set up an education program for the division in which one of the men would give a short lesson in electronics when everyone mustered in the repair shop before starting their regular days work. Most of our measuring devices and meters had been sent to the shipyard laboratory for calibration. I managed to arrange for a couple of my men to go there and work alongside the yard technicians. It was a good learning opportunity.

The division was also responsible for a number of specific compartments on board. Part of that responsibility meant repainting a few of them. One such location was the antenna mount atop the bridge There was no time in our work schedule for painting  that space. It wasn’t just painting, either. We had to chip off many coats of older paint in order to apply the new primer and color there. I discussed this with my boss and we came up with a solution. We asked all the men to stay on board after the end of a regular work day in order to chip off all the old paint. We “borrowed” some tools for this that were not being used that night. At the conclusion of that phase of the work my boss and I ordered pizza and ice cream for the entire division which we paid for. We had an allocation of coffee from the the ship for our use in the division. We set aside part of that and used it to barter with some shipyard painters. They got the coffee, and in return used their spray equipment to actually apply the paint.

One day, just after we got out of the drydock, someone flipped a cigarette into the bay. It was actually a very dangerous thing to do. The water alongside the ships and piers was covered with all kinds of detritus, The junk floated on top of a thick film of oily liquid that was highly flammable. Once it ignited the flotsam in the water acted as a wick and sucked up more flammable material, In short order the flames alongside the pier were higher thann the edge of the flight deck. The shipyard fire department was called, of course, but before they arrived our own fire fighting parties were smothering the flames with chemical foam that we had on board for dealing with aircraft crashes. When the yard firetrucks did come, they connected hoses and aimed streams of water at the base of the flames, That washed the foam away and the fire gained strength once more. It didn’t take long for the ship’s firefighters to make them stop using water and reapply a coat of foam. This activity, as you might easily imagine, was accompanied by a lot of colorful profanity. In the end, the fire remained out.

The next thing scheduled was a series of trial sailings during which the ship went out to sea briefly in order to test all systems and confirm that the repairs made were all done correctly. Two items on the bridge were the responsibility of my division. One was the radar repeater used by the officer of the deck to keep an eye on other shipping. The other was an identical radar repeater located a bit away from the front of the bridge, next to the chart table. It was used for navigation. The ship had barely cleared the breakwater when the first call came down from the bridge to the electronics shop. The deck officers repeater was not working. I sent one of my best technicians to the bridge to deal with the problem. Minutes later came a second call. The bridge watch had tried to us the navigation repeater in place of their normal scope and now it, too, wasn’t working. I sent another technician to handle that.

When tech number 2 reached the bridge he saw tech number 1 looking at the repeater screen through a cover that helped keep out extra light ad make the picture on the scope appear brighter.Tech one had his baseball cap turned sideways to avoid interfering with the cover. He had 2 screwdrivers stuck into the back band.

“Hey!”, tech 2 called out to tech 1, “Whatcha watching there? Mickey Mouse?”.

At just that moment the junior officer of the deck had on the open bridge been scanning the horizon through his binoculars.  He obviously thought the remark was aimed at him. He stepped inside the pilot house just as tech 1 started to leave in order to get a replacement part for the first repeater.

“Hey, Sailor!”, he called out.

Now my technicians had a considerable amount of professional pride. They were used to being called Tech or Sparky, but not, heaven forbid, Sailor. My man continued on his way, blissfully unaware that he was being addressed.

“You! Sailor! Come here!”

“Who? Me Sir?”

“Yes you.”, the officer continued, “Square away that hat!”

My tech removed the screwdrivers from the band and stuck them in his belt. Then he carefully folded the baseball cap and put it in his pocket. The officer was angry, but couldn’t positively identify this man as the one he felt had been insubordinate. So he tried another tack.

“You’re an electronics technician?”.

“Yes, Sir”.

“Did you have to go to school for that?”.

“I did, Sir”.

“Was that a hard course?”.

“Yes Sir!” my tech answered. “But we were told that if we flunked out we’d be sent to Officer Candidate School. So I tried real hard, and I passed.”.

With that retort my tech turned and quickly left the bridge, leaving behind him a speechless junior officer.

By the time tech 1 came into the electronics shop I was just getting off the internal ship telephone with one very upset junior officer of the deck. I sent a third man back to the bridge with the replacement part and kept tech 1 away from possible encounters with that specific officer for several days.