Wetherhorn

In the 1960s the US Navy always wanted naval aviators to be qualified to drive ships as well as fly airplanes.  Aviators were often assigned to ships in order to achieve this qualification.  The ships they were sent to were usually aircraft carriers of some type.

Valley Forge had a mixture of aviators in various positions. Some were department heads, others were doing their first tour as part of the ship. Among our junior aviators were the navigator, CIC officer, and hanger deck officer. Part of their qualification was to be able to drive a ship. For independent sailing, this wasn’t too difficult a task. Operating in a formation with other ships was a little bit more daunting.

The specific case occurred when the navigator, a first shipboard tour flyer, was assigned as officer of the deck and we were rejoining the other amphibious ships after carrying VIPs in our helicopters to some higher level meetings. We had just made radar contact with the approaching group when the navigator asked to talk to me directly on the sound powered telephone used by my CIC representative on the bridge.

“”I’ve got to maneuver the ship into her station in the task group.” he told me, “I’ve never done this before. Can you help me? But I don’t want anyone to know.”

“Of course.” I replied, “We’ll send you recommendations for course an speed changes and you just give commands whenever we recommend them.”

Then came a few minutes of near panic driven research. I’d never done this before either, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. I pulled a couple of books of the reference shelf. One was the ship’s maneuvering data book. It had tables showing how much time it took to slow down or speed up. There were also diagrams for the diameter of the ship’s turning circle at various speeds.  Armed with this information I began to construct a picture of the problem.

On the diagram you can see the position of the ships. We were on course for point A. Point B was where we wanted to finish. The arc from A to B was taken from the ship’s maneuvering characteristics book. The diameter of the arc was the distance the ship would travel off her original track in order to turn 180 degrees.

The time to make the turn was y minutes. During that time the other ships would continue to move and the distance they would travel was equal to the distance from A to C, That meant that we needed to start our turn when we reached point C in order not to finish our turn well behind our final destination and to then have to run fast to catch up to where we needed to finish.

Knowing the time it would take to decrease our speed to match that of the other ships and the time it took to make the 180 degree turn, it was possible to locate point D, which was the place where we needed to start deceleration in order not to overshoot our destination.

With all this data in hand I determined the range and bearing of the flagship from point C and as soon as we reached it I recommended that we start our turn using standard rudder. When enough time had passed for us to reach point D I recommended slowing to the speed of the other ships.

While all this was happening and all the CIC team was following our progress intently the senior enlisted radar man, Chief Smith, came in and looked at what we were doing.

“What’s going on?” He asked.

“Wait just a couple of minutes, Chief.” I answered. “I’ll explain then.”

He settled down in one of the air control module’s arm chairs, and waited. Within minutes Valley Forge had reached her assigned station with a minimum number of maneuvering commands. I then went to Chief Smith and told him what we had just done, and how. His face betrayed a slight sense of wonder. Then he pushed his hat to the back of his head and said.

“Damn, Mr Wetherhorn, You’d of made one helluva chief!”

I always thought that was one of the finest compliments I ever received during my active naval service.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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