Stories of my Father...
My Father died on October 10th. He was 87. I'm trying to get these stories down now, before I forget them, forget him, and his voice telling them. I wanted to get them recorded, but I didn't manage to do that when I was last there in September.
This story began in his Navy years, during the tail end of, and just after, the Korean war. They were in Port in Japan, Yokosuka (?) When they discovered one of the ship's boilers was worn out and in need of re-tubing. (Already, some details escape me, I don't remember if it was because the boiler blew up, or if there was some inspection that uncovered this wear.) While Boiler #1 was being re-tubed, it was discovered that Boiler #2 was on the edge of the same failure, and so BOTH boilers had to be worked on and completely re-tubed. Since this was something that obviously could NOT be done while underway, that meant that the USS Fort Marion was left behind while the rest of the Fleet headed home. Now, the fellas had been a way from home for a long while and they wanted to get HOME, so they worked the poor crews inside the boilers, HARD. (Local workers, not Navy boys) As Dad put it, "They passed in tools, materials, and bowls of rice, and kept them at it, 24-7"... And then some higher-up officer of the ship made the successful case to the Admiralty for them to take "Great Circle" route home to San Diego, which was the shortest, most direct route. This would bring them in just a few days after the rest of the fleet arrived, instead of making them several weeks behind the main body. BUT! They were do this at a top speed of 13 knots, no faster. So the boilers were re-tubed, the ship provisioned, and they set off on Great Circle route for home. "At 13 knots per hour"...
Meanwhile, the rest of the fleet had a stop over in Hawaii, and did drills at sea, "steamed in square circles" and all that rot, as Dad put it.
Now, at 13 knots per hour, the main screws of the ship are only supposed to turn "x" amount of times per hour, and the engineering log book is supposed to be strictly kept, recording how many times per hour that screw turned. And That log book reflected that indeed, the screw was "Only" turning that many times per hour. Keep this in mind, it becomes important later...
Once they hit international waters, they also hit heavy cloud cover, which kept my Father, a midshipman, from getting a good, solid star sighting for navigation. (LONG before GPS or satellites or ANY of that navigation capability!) It also meant he couldn't get a sun sighting either, so he had to do his best guess as to where they were on their Great Circle route for home. All based on the "Fact" that they were going 13 knots per hour, and so that meant that in 12 hours they should have gone about "this" much distance and be right about "There" on the maps. And Dad had to do that for almost the entire trip across the Pacific.
And then the clouds finally broke.
And Dad got a good, solid star sighting.
And he recalculated their position, three or four times... and figured he *Had* to be wrong.
Then he got a good solid Sun sight the next morning, and there was no doubting it. He went down to check the engineering log book of the screw turns, and yeah- sure enough, it was only 13 knots per hour... So he wrote it up in his morning report, and handed it to the "Old Man" for signature.
"Expect to spot Point Loma Light - 0800 hours tomorrow."
And he *Almost* signed off on it, then stopped, and took a closer look.
"WhhaATT!?"
"Yes Sir, we expect to spot Point Loma Light tomorrow morning..."
"Hard Left rudder!" And they ducked into the radar shadow of the San Clemente islands. Where they dropped sideboys over the railings, scrubbed sides, holy-stoned the decks, painted, and generally cleaned for several days while watching the radar screens, for the REST of the fleet. One did NOT go into Port ahead of the Flagship. Especially several DAYS ahead of the flagship!
Now, when the rest of the fleet finally appeared and chugged past them, they dropped out of the radar shadow, and trailed along into San Diego Port in a more appropriate position. But, they got moored up to a pier within clear sight of the Flagship. Next door or not, I don't recall, just that the flagship had a clear view of this shiny clean LSD 22, while the rest of the fleet looked like Hell, coffee stained sides, rusty metal, dinged up paint.
And the XO and First Officer had made a beeline for the gangplank, leaving my Father as the most Senior officer aboard when the Flagship flashed a message at them,
An interrogative... "Clean sides?"
Father tried to ignore it, hoped that if he could just get to the end of his shift, he could pass answering THAT question off to some other poor lout.
No such luck.
Message flashed again, This time with reference to the specific regulation that forbade putting sideboards over the railings while underway, and some phrasing that strongly suggested they answer RIGHT NOW, else the Admiral would be walking up the gangplank next to GET AN ANSWER.
And Dad came up with a beaut. (They can't Court Martial him now, he's beyond their reach...) Flashed back to the flagship was the message,
"Quartermaster discovered amazing self-cleaning paint in Japan."
*******************************
It was some years before one of my Father's shipmates (Boats, I think? The Boatswain, went by "Boats",) finally revealed how they had covered that distance while "Only" doing 13 knots per hour... The boys wanted to be HOME, so they had cranked those brand new boilers ALL the way up and were doing something more like 18 or 19 knots per hour. But they sent someone down to lift the counter arm off of the screw shaft for 10 minutes or so each hour, so the counter only recorded, and the log book duly noted, only the "Right" amount of turns to calculate out to 13 knots per hour!
I'd love to know if there are any Naval records of those messages and if there was any further fallout.
This story began in his Navy years, during the tail end of, and just after, the Korean war. They were in Port in Japan, Yokosuka (?) When they discovered one of the ship's boilers was worn out and in need of re-tubing. (Already, some details escape me, I don't remember if it was because the boiler blew up, or if there was some inspection that uncovered this wear.) While Boiler #1 was being re-tubed, it was discovered that Boiler #2 was on the edge of the same failure, and so BOTH boilers had to be worked on and completely re-tubed. Since this was something that obviously could NOT be done while underway, that meant that the USS Fort Marion was left behind while the rest of the Fleet headed home. Now, the fellas had been a way from home for a long while and they wanted to get HOME, so they worked the poor crews inside the boilers, HARD. (Local workers, not Navy boys) As Dad put it, "They passed in tools, materials, and bowls of rice, and kept them at it, 24-7"... And then some higher-up officer of the ship made the successful case to the Admiralty for them to take "Great Circle" route home to San Diego, which was the shortest, most direct route. This would bring them in just a few days after the rest of the fleet arrived, instead of making them several weeks behind the main body. BUT! They were do this at a top speed of 13 knots, no faster. So the boilers were re-tubed, the ship provisioned, and they set off on Great Circle route for home. "At 13 knots per hour"...
Meanwhile, the rest of the fleet had a stop over in Hawaii, and did drills at sea, "steamed in square circles" and all that rot, as Dad put it.
Now, at 13 knots per hour, the main screws of the ship are only supposed to turn "x" amount of times per hour, and the engineering log book is supposed to be strictly kept, recording how many times per hour that screw turned. And That log book reflected that indeed, the screw was "Only" turning that many times per hour. Keep this in mind, it becomes important later...
Once they hit international waters, they also hit heavy cloud cover, which kept my Father, a midshipman, from getting a good, solid star sighting for navigation. (LONG before GPS or satellites or ANY of that navigation capability!) It also meant he couldn't get a sun sighting either, so he had to do his best guess as to where they were on their Great Circle route for home. All based on the "Fact" that they were going 13 knots per hour, and so that meant that in 12 hours they should have gone about "this" much distance and be right about "There" on the maps. And Dad had to do that for almost the entire trip across the Pacific.
And then the clouds finally broke.
And Dad got a good, solid star sighting.
And he recalculated their position, three or four times... and figured he *Had* to be wrong.
Then he got a good solid Sun sight the next morning, and there was no doubting it. He went down to check the engineering log book of the screw turns, and yeah- sure enough, it was only 13 knots per hour... So he wrote it up in his morning report, and handed it to the "Old Man" for signature.
"Expect to spot Point Loma Light - 0800 hours tomorrow."
And he *Almost* signed off on it, then stopped, and took a closer look.
"WhhaATT!?"
"Yes Sir, we expect to spot Point Loma Light tomorrow morning..."
"Hard Left rudder!" And they ducked into the radar shadow of the San Clemente islands. Where they dropped sideboys over the railings, scrubbed sides, holy-stoned the decks, painted, and generally cleaned for several days while watching the radar screens, for the REST of the fleet. One did NOT go into Port ahead of the Flagship. Especially several DAYS ahead of the flagship!
Now, when the rest of the fleet finally appeared and chugged past them, they dropped out of the radar shadow, and trailed along into San Diego Port in a more appropriate position. But, they got moored up to a pier within clear sight of the Flagship. Next door or not, I don't recall, just that the flagship had a clear view of this shiny clean LSD 22, while the rest of the fleet looked like Hell, coffee stained sides, rusty metal, dinged up paint.
And the XO and First Officer had made a beeline for the gangplank, leaving my Father as the most Senior officer aboard when the Flagship flashed a message at them,
An interrogative... "Clean sides?"
Father tried to ignore it, hoped that if he could just get to the end of his shift, he could pass answering THAT question off to some other poor lout.
No such luck.
Message flashed again, This time with reference to the specific regulation that forbade putting sideboards over the railings while underway, and some phrasing that strongly suggested they answer RIGHT NOW, else the Admiral would be walking up the gangplank next to GET AN ANSWER.
And Dad came up with a beaut. (They can't Court Martial him now, he's beyond their reach...) Flashed back to the flagship was the message,
"Quartermaster discovered amazing self-cleaning paint in Japan."
*******************************
It was some years before one of my Father's shipmates (Boats, I think? The Boatswain, went by "Boats",) finally revealed how they had covered that distance while "Only" doing 13 knots per hour... The boys wanted to be HOME, so they had cranked those brand new boilers ALL the way up and were doing something more like 18 or 19 knots per hour. But they sent someone down to lift the counter arm off of the screw shaft for 10 minutes or so each hour, so the counter only recorded, and the log book duly noted, only the "Right" amount of turns to calculate out to 13 knots per hour!
I'd love to know if there are any Naval records of those messages and if there was any further fallout.