Mighty warship feels the sting (Australian jellyfish attack USS Ronald Reagan!)

The main condensers reside under the main engine steam turbines and a leak allows sea water to get mixed with the fresh water and pumped back into the steam cycle. Bad Ju-Ju!

OK I understand now. We had condensers also and salt water was our friend as long as a tube didn't rupture into the R-11 side.

Salinity brings back another not so fond memory. I was assigned Test Lab when I first went to Engineering. Trying to feed a 1200 pound system a Red Devil Lye Cocktail was not a fun task. I had it spit back at me more than once. Later in my civilian job when I was a Boiler Operator where I worked there were more modern means to control it like an automatic injection system.

Zebra = bathroom?

LOL No that was the Head. ZEBRA was a material condition for the ship. Material condition for the hatch and scuttlebutt configurations. Inother words open or closed doors. I'll try to explain it.

ZEBRA means ALL Hatches, and scuttles including hanger bay and elevator doors were closed. This was maximum protection from fire and flooding. This was done during General Quarters and if I remember right you had 12-15 minutes from the sounding of the alarm to get to your Battle Station and complete this task.

After 5 minutes from GQ alarm you were supposed to be at your station and beginning this process. At that time all hatches along the main passageways were closed. When Zebra was reported to Damage Control as being set you could not open a door-or hatch without first contacting Damage Control and gaining permission.

For hatches & scuttles two more conditions existed that were more lax. The next less restrictive was Yoke. This generally meant all hatches below the waterline were closed except for the scuttle a small hole in the hatch you crawled through. This was generally done at sea and in port after working hours were over.

The next was X or X-ray meant everything was open and this was rare. It offered the least amount of protection in case of emergency. In general while the crew was in port and working some hatches would get left open. So in the late afternoon the ship would have assigned persons to set Yoke again. That usually was just a quick walk through closing some hatches. After that you went to the Engineering Log room and gave them a list of all your departments hatches and signed a log stating they were correct.

If a person has just 5 minutes let's say at 1:00am to get dressed and go to their Battle Station which may be on the other end of the carrier and 5 decks or more up it's reasonable to think many will be dressing while running to Battle Stations.

The reason I mentioned effecting Zebra was for that reason. Also a man overboard USED to mean a very informal an on the double report to your work center to report in which again could be on the other end of the ship. You could not call in or ave a shipmate report for you it had to be a visual count by your superior. Man overboard muster did not require you wearing your uniform or even pants or shirt. If it was Fruit of the Looms that was fine even a towel if you were taking a shower. Time is critical and your shipmate is in the water. Trying to find out who {if anyone} actually went overboard and where from many gives quickly needed info to the search teams. It may tell the teams which side to look and if they were working what color shirt to look for etc.

Navy ships were not built nor intended for social engineering nor women. Their very design was never intended to be coed. Trying to make a ship such would have to effect readiness times. Seconds on a ship in every emergency counts and can means lives lost or saved.

Yeah, me too..and it was ME! I was washed oveboard, from elevator 1, by a VERY LARGE wave back in August of 1986. It was me and six other guys. Everyone got picked up and the only one seriously injured was a guy who got slammed into a drop tank by the wave. Luckily, he didn't go over the side but he did have a couple of broken ribs and a ruptured spleen.

I don't have to tell you how lucky you were. You know it :>} The only time I fell in I was at water level at deck house 4 {fantail} on boat crew. I missed my jump from a utility boat to platform and went between the fender and platform. A good coxun kept the boat off me till I got out.

I've seen a couple of nasty crashes. In '98, on Enterprise, we had an EA-6B land onto/into an S-3 that had landed ahead of it and hadn't cleared the landing area. All 4 in the Prowler died but the two guys in the S-3 (it was configured as a tanker) punched out and were eventually ok. Pretty messy though. Destroyed the EA-6, the S-3 and a couple of F/-18s.

I've got a picture of two F-14's that ran into each other on the hanger deck. The Aviation Bosuns had one parked half way on #3 elevator. The elevator door was red tagged OOC due to maintenance or something else and somebody hit the switch. That send that F-14 into another parked one next to #4 and it looked like they were kissing. I would not have wanted to been the person who touched that switch.

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