Yep
Served on the Coral Sea off Vietnam
What is weird... Standing forward the bridge and as a plane
Hits the wire - hearing a ping whizzing past you! Later found out
These were -rivets / unsecured bolts or other FOD that sometimes come off
The planes...(really were controlled crashes) made me stand farther to
Starboard
Lol
Hi there shipmate. I was ships company. “E” division on the Coral Sea from 1963 to 1967. Two deployments to Viet Nam, eleven months in ‘66. We had completed the original seven month deployment and went to Yokusuka to meet the relieving carrier, but when we got there we were told the incoming carrier was not to relieve us but was an addition to the fleet. We were ordered back to Subic to pick up that which we had offloaded and go back on station.
This was the only time that I had seen bar girls not knowing a ship’s schedule. As soon as the ship tied up at Cubi I went ashore. As I was walking down the street outside the gate, one of the bar girls must have recognized me, she stopped me and asked “what is your ship?” I replied Coral Sea, and she laughed at me and said “Oh no, the Coral Sea has gone back to the States!”
I assured her that the ship was tied up at Cubi and she got a sudden panicked look on her face and turned and started running down the street shouting “the Coral Sea is here, the Coral Sea is here!” Thus to alert all the other girls that there was the sudden conflict of love interests in that there were too many boyfriends in town at the same time.
Yes, there was chaos the clubs that night, and many girls suddenly had to leave town to see a sick family member in their home province.
Lots of interesting memories. Many years I later worked at NCSP San Miguel as a civilian employee until Mt. Pinatubo forced us to abandon it.
Regards.