Thanks! Did a "Kiddie Cruise"; enlisted at 17, due to be discharged the day before my 21st birthday. Assigned to the USS Vulcan (AR-5), a repair ship, out of boot camp. She was a floating machine shop with four 5 inch guns to make her a warship. Deck Seaman; trained as helmsman, lookout, phone talker (bridge-shipwide communication), security watch, messenger, NBC decontamination. My battle station was first loader on #2 gun mount.
When I reported aboard, I was told by shipmates that she was welded to the pier and mired in her own coffee grounds. Imagine my surprise when a couple of months later we got the order "make preparations for getting underway". We got underway and moved...a couple of miles up the bay to the Army Piers.
Our "war" was the Cuban Missile Crisis. We were tasked with evacuating military dependents and civvy contractors from GTMO.
Ah! Wasn’t she a destroyer tender?
Now I have to look…
My mistake… She sounded like an all-around repair ship for everything. While it sounded like she wasn’t doing a lot of real steaming later in her career, there must’ve been some pretty interesting repair jobs that took place with her crew.
My dad was on one of the destroyers, down in the Cuban missile crisis (the USS, Bristol, DD 857) as well.
I would bet a sailor would learn a lot of things on a ship like that.