This sounds somewhat reasonable, though I’m used to manual backup for the computer part .... though that was 30 years ago.
My own experience: I had just received my SWO pin on the USS Independence (CV-62) and was standing my first non-supervised watch. It was the Mid-watch (12AM-04AM for those that don’t know). Mid-watch was my favorite watch. One of the reasons was all the engineering drills occurred on that watch.
There are 4 boilers on the Indy. Normally 1 would be down for regular maintenance, 2 were used to maintain normal operations, and 1 would be used to hold engineering casualty drills.
We were in the Persian Gulf driving circles. Bunker Hill a Cruiser was a few nautical miles to my Port driving her own loops.
We were running a low water casualty on one boiler when one of the other two currently operating suffered a high water casualty. With that we dropped all power. 30 seconds later emergency generators kicked in. Engineering was running crazy driving one team to address bringing back on line the drill boiler as quickly as possible, while also responding to the actual casualty...high water is very bad for boilers and turbines.
I was on the horn with the CO explaining the situation, and recommending we ask the admiral if he’d like to transfer Alpha Whiskey to the bunker hill (AW is a command authority for all air control activities) he said he’d consider it, when power went down again. The flight deck patrol had decided it was too dark and turned on some of the flight deck flood lights...that took down the emergency generators. I excused myself from the CO and before I could reach out to the flight deck folks to get his people under control the Cheng (chief engineer an old salty EDO) was already up my backside asking what we were doing. My Junior officer of the deck was an old hat and was already on with the deck folks getting things squared away, sending a messenger as well, while I took my strapping from Cheng. We got the lights back on in good stead.
About that time the Admirals Chief of Staff (COS) came up and I quickly brought him up to date while signaling my JOOD to call the captain. A minute later there’s the CO greeting the COS in his skivvies by first name and chatting with him while I and the rest of the bridge crew got back to our real job. After about 2 minutes they both said seems under control and let them know if there were any further issues.
This all happened about an hour into the watch. By the time 0400 rolled around everything had completely settled down and I was reviewing the deck logs prior to turnover and asking the team what we could have done different. Gave my briefing to the new watch and headed for the rack.
And that is the story of my first solo OOD watch.
Things happen fast and even when you respond appropriately, they don’t always go your way. So yes, I could see how this could have happened as it was explained by this ‘former chief engineer’ Those ships also aren’t manned at nearly the level of the team we had during my little escapade.
good story!
Brings back memories...that’s a hell of a 1st watch :)
You must have had your hands full as a Surface Warfare Officer. I was on the Indy in 1974/1975 with the Air Wing. At the time I was an Airman in HS-5. They stuck all the airedales in a bearthing area right below the arresting gear as punishment for not being ship's company. I was so young it was all fine with me. o7