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To: ProudVet77

Yeah...how was it on the McCloy? My dad was a destroyer man...WWII and Korea. When I was up in the North Atlantic in 1976, I remember seeing one of our escorts, the bow was taking green water, then you could see the screws come out, and the whole time, the ship was rolling and yawing. The water was so whipped up that the surface was white and frothy.

Nobody was allowed on deck, all the planes had 24 point tiedowns. Me and two of my buddies wanted to see what it looked like at the bow, so we went out in the catwalk (keeping our heads down so they couldn't see us from the bridge)

We watched the big, bulbous bow of the carrier come ponderously up out of the water, and TONS and TONS of water cascaded off of it...it was stunningly unbelievable! Then the ship paused, and that bow went back into the water...the only thing I can compare it to is that picture of the North Sea lighthouse with the wave crashing around it....

It looked like the whole bow of the carrier was going to submerge the way the bow entered the water and kept going...the three off us nearly killed each other leaving footprints on each others backs trying to get through the hatch!

Needless to say, we weren't in any danger. No way the bow was even close to going under, but it sure didn't look that way to us. Without a doubt, that was the most vivid memory I have of all the time I spent at sea.


44 posted on 02/24/2005 6:50:06 PM PST by rlmorel (Teresa Heinz-Kerry, better known as Kerry's "Noisy Two Legged ATM")
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To: rlmorel
When I was up in the North Atlantic in 1976, I remember seeing one of our escorts, the bow was taking green water, then you could see the screws come out, and the whole time, the ship was rolling and yawing.

That sounds about right. (but we were single screw). On one trip we were taking green water on the signal bridge. The bullet proof plexiglass on the forward gun mount got smashed in, several antennas broke off the mast and were hanging by their guy wires.
Our carrier was the Intrepid, she was out of Quonset Pt RI, we were part of ASW Group 4. Eventually they turned us into an R&D ship. We got the first SATNAV system on the east coast. Then they put a van into the DASH hangar and a spool of cable with microphones. We became the first mobile SOSUS station. Then they added the "golfball", which was manned by civilians. I'm betting it was a satcomm because I had to shut down the WLR-1 every time they wanted to do something. The skipper at that time went on to be CINCLANTFLT. When she was retired, rather than razor blades, they sold her to the Mexican Navy.
Another quick story - we were pulling into Keil Germany. I was on sea and anchor detail, manning the starboard pelorous. Suddenly someone on the bow noticed the anchor chain was missing. Apparently one of the links gave way and the anchor and all went splash. They went into full panic mode as they thought it might have hit our SQS-26X. Fortunately no damage to the sonar dome. As it turns out, using google I found several such events, apparently the shipyard did something wrong with the anchor chain on several DEs. :)
56 posted on 02/24/2005 7:22:13 PM PST by ProudVet77 (It's boogitty boogitty boogitty time!)
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