Back in about November of '67 the boat I was on, about 120' long, with ten swabbies but no officer aboard, the commander being an E7, was tied up to a bouy in the Da Nang harbor. There was a name for the place, which I've forgotten, "something or other basin." We were waiting for cargo.
This place was considered safe, and had a barge load of bombs tied up to the next bouy south, maybe 250 yards away. There were a bunch of bombs on that barge, waiting to be brought upriver to the airbase. I don't know bombs that well, but they were maybe 30" diameter and 15' feet long, stacked in two rows, about six high, maybe 90' long. Something like 720 bombs, still with shipping covers on the fuze holes, no fins. 2000 pounders, maybe?
Well, I had the mid watch, and was up by myself, trying to see what was around me past the flood lights shining outward in all directions, wrecking my night vision, powered by a diesel engine generator putting out enough noise I coudn't hear anything. Just me and my Thompson M1A1 waiting for relief.
A YTB (Navy yard tug big) pulled up alongside the bargeload of bombs, preparatory to moving the load up river. Per SOP the YTB shined it's searchlite thoroughly looking of signs of out the ordinary sort, a slow process. The YTB spent maybe five minutes on my side, then circled around to the outboard side to continue the search. When he got to the middle of the barge on the far side the YTB started moving much slower, making repeated small motions trying to get light down between the rows of bombs. They did this for twenty minutes, and then left. They said nothing on the main harbour vhf net I monitored.
In a half hour a boston whaler came skipping over the waves, and pulled up and tied up to the same area on the far side of the bomb loaded barge that the YTB had searched so carefully. I could see their work lights, and once a guy climbing on the load. I figured those boys were probably EOD, and some number of bombs had improvised fuzes in them, probably tied together with some of our det cord.
I figured if I awoke the petty officers, they would freak out and want to move the boat, which meant I would loose my sleep I had coming from 4AM to hopefully 8AM. Besides, Eod had the situation in hand, and if the barge load of bombs did go off we all would not have anything to complain about because we wouldn't have any thing to complain with, as you can see. Might as well just stay there. So I did. Shortly after that the three guys left in the whaler. All this time someone on the harbor net had been trying to reach EOD, breaking in every ten minutes or so. Finally someone told this fellow that EOD had just left "so and so basin" where I was. Sure enough proof that the bombs had been wired, and I had been moments from death! Gave me a chuckle, that did. A few minutes later the YTB came back and moved the load up the river. I was relievedfrom watch at 4 AM, and slept till 8 AM, O Caloo, Calay.
For all you landlubbers, I didn't say a word to anyone of my crew about the bomb incident. There was no point, for it had ended well, and this sort of thing happened often enough that there was no novelty about stuff like that. I forgot all about it for about ten years until when racking my brain for a real, but not gruesome or sad, story to tell folks who had no experience, this story came to mind.