Posted on 05/09/2016 8:39:48 AM PDT by Sean_Anthony
The valorous dead of the USS Cole have been betrayed too many times to count by each administration
On Thursday morning, sailors on board the USS Cole were lining up for an early lunch. Seventeen of them died as an Al Qaeda bomb on board a fishing boat tore through the hull outside the galley. The dead included 15 men and 2 women, one of whom had a young child. For three weeks the crew of the USS Cole struggled to keep their ship from sinking while working waist deep in water with bucket brigades, sleeping on the deck and living surrounded by the terrible aftermath of the terrorist attack.
The survivors, wounded and whole, received the words “Glory is the Reward of Valor” written on the bent steel removed from the site of the explosion that tore through their ship and their lives.
Not on deck. Down in the engine room on a tug I was working on. The deck was open to the bilge area and water was coming in pretty fast, around the shaft area, so someone brought a gas powered pump down in the engine room.
One guy stayed down there to long and passed out from the fumes even though the deck was open. Probably a 10’ by 16’ sized opening.
Pretty hard to get a pump primed 10 or 15 ft above the water in the bilge.
Somebody didn’t know to hook up the exhaust hose? The P-250 will work to 20 feet lift and has an exhaust hose for use below deck.
Sorry but this was back in 1979 or 80. I don’t know pump models. It was just a gas pump with like a 10’suction hose.
Were you on a civilian tug or a Navy one? That could make all the difference.
18 yo civilian.
Bingo. There’s the difference. Navy ships, especially combatant ships, are equipped and their crews are regularly trained for battle damage repair. A civilian tug wouldn’t be.
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