I was in Brememton in 76 for a new core in the reactor - crew did fire watches and oversaw every civilian on board. Assigned one-on-one when they came aboard to work.
I heard years later they stopped that practice and civilians were used for all work in the yard and went unsupervised except in the “nuc” sections of the boat. At that time Aft of frame 57.
What a coinkidink! We were in the yard in Bremerton in 76-77 too. If memory serves we arrived in July or August ‘76. We didn’t get refueled; we did get a sonar refit and lots of other goodies, mostly weapons stuff and fire control. I was a nuke; I stood *plenty* of those fire watches as I had just arrived on the boat and was a “non-qual” at the time. As I recall the yardbirds did a lot of work unsupervised, even back aft — unless you call the fire watch “supervision”. :-) I remember one fire watch I stood *in* the reactor compartment, while the yard guy welded on the pressurizer in a really contorted position (for him). Some of those tig welding specialists were really, really good at what they did.
While in Mayport we Adsep’d a young man on a Friday. On Tuesday morning we caught him coming on the ship with a gaggle of shipyard workers so we sent him packing again. The shipyard assigned him to another Aegis CG and, on his first day there with blueprints he couldn’t understand, sliced through the main SPY-1 cable connecting the forward and aft deckhouses. After that, we never let anyone on our ship without an escort.