Wetherhorn

Squeezing Electrons
My second ship, USS Union (AK-106), was a leftover from the Second World War. She had been upgraded over the years, but, at heart, she was still from an era long past. One of the things added wasa radar installation. Union actually had 2 radars. One was primarily for air search, and the other for surface search and navigation. We had one repeater scope on the bridge. It could receive input from either radar set. The choice was made using a WW II era barrel switch. The switch was old and did not always make a good connection when selecting different radar. When that happened I often got a call to send a technician because the radar on the bridge wasn’t working. Of course, I sent someone to check on the problem. The first thing he would do is select the other radar, and then switch back to the first. If that didn’t solve the problem, and it often didn’t, he would give a strong kick to the barrel switch. That action always made the inside contacts connect and the radar picture was restored.
Another characteristic of the age of the ship was that the defensive armament of 4 5inch anti-aircraft guns were always controlled from the gun mounts. There was no central control, much less a radar fire control unit. In order to give the gun crews some sense of where the next attack might be coming from we had a station atop the bridge that we called ”gun control”. The main radar in CIC (Combat Information Center) would report incoming raids to the executive officer hose battle station was in the darkened CIC room. He, in turn, would notify gun control over an internal sound-powered telephone connection. A bit primitive, but easy to understand, isn’t it?
During one drill we went to battle stations and the executive officer came into CIC fairly quickly. The officer assigned to gun control was caught sleeping. His cabin was 4 decks below the top of the bridge. He dressed rapidly and ran up the ladders to reach his battle station. Meanwhile, the executive officer was trying to establish contact.
“Gun control, Combat”, he called into his end of the sound powered hone circuit.
There was no answer. The person who was supposed to be on the other end was still climbing ladders.
“Gun control, Combat”, he called again, louder.
There was still no answer.
The executive officer turned to our leading electronics technician. “There’s something wrong with this phone!”
In his defense, I must mention that the executive officer was a merchant marine academy graduate. He was a superb ship handler, but his technical background in electronics was a bit limited. Today we’d say he was technically challenged.
The technician stepped up and pointed to the cord on the deck.
“Excuse me, Sir.” He said. “But you’re standing on the cord. That squeezes the wire and the electrons can’t get through. Step back and try again.”
The executive officer looked, with a slightly quizzical expression, as if unsure about believing what he had just been told, and stepped back.
He called again. In the interval the gun control officer had succeeded in reaching his battle station and responded.
From then on every time we went to battle stations the executive officer would warn people away from his telephone cord so that he could communicate successfully with gun control.
I still snicker whenever I remember this.