Darrel's Domain
I started my Navy career when I enlisted on April 18, 1975. This was a delayed enlistment in the nuclear power program and I started active duty on September 23, 1975 when I entered boot camp at Great Lakes. At the time, boot camp was supposed to be 9 weeks long. For me, however, it lasted 12 weeks. This was because I had been selected as a member of one of the "triple threat" companies that included the drum and bugle corps (which I was a member of), the drill team, and the choir. It took a total of 3 weeks to get enough members to form a full company. My time in boot camp was pleasant enough since I was first designated as the mail PO for the company (no one wants to mess with the mail in boot camp, thus I was treated fairly well). At about the 4 week point, I inadvertently sent the key for the mailbox through the laundry. I was terrified, so I 'fessed up to the company commander right away. He was a salty old submarine sailor who threatened to send me to a week of "delta" (remember that?). Anyway, I never went and my honesty must have struck a chord, because about a week later, I was told to report to the battalion commander (a LTjg). I thought I was dead, but when I arrived, he told me that I was the new battalion mail PO. Quite a jump! After that, I got out of all sorts of drills and other nasty stuff, since I had to take care of the mail for 12 companies instead of just one. I finished boot camp just in time to spend the Christmas holidays home.
After boot camp, I went through basic electricity and electronics school (BEE) and then to EM-A school. I finished EM-A school first in my class in April 1976 and was advanced to EM3.
From there, I went west to Mare Island Naval Shipyard to report to Nuclear Power School. Since my class in nuke school wasn't going to start until August 1976, (class 7701) I had a lot of time on my hands. The powers at Mare Island thought the same thing, so we were formed into work parties to do odd jobs around the base. I requested and received a temporary assignment at the recruiting office near my home town. I spent two months being a recruiting assistant in Wellsville NY. Since I had to drive the Navy car at times, the recruiter in charge arranged for me to obtain a government drivers license. This came in handy later.
After the two month stint as a recruiter, it was back to Mare Island for more work party. Since I had the drivers license, I got to drive around in the Navy trucks. Later, after nuke school started, I was designated as the "duty driver" since I was one of the few with a government license. Kept me effectively off the watch bill at the wee hours of the morning.
While I was at nuke school, I was in the top section of electricians. We had a tendency to get ahead in our studies, so the math instructor would do neat stuff like teach us palmistry during our breaks. He was the person that first suggested various officer accession programs to the guys in my section. I learned about NROTC and decided to apply for it, since I now had a better idea of what I wanted to do with my life. Out of about 25 guys in our section, I believe that about 50% of us ended up with commissions sooner or later.
After completing nuke school in January 1977, we had to pack up all the books and materials and ship them off to Orlando, since we were the last class through Mare Island. After packing, we all made the caravan to Idaho Falls. We started our prototype training in February 1977 and by June of 1977, I had qualified on all my watchstations and was a qualified nuke. In July, I received 2 sets of orders. One said to report to the USS South Carolina and the other said to report to the NROTC Unit at the University of Rochester. I chose the Rochester orders and reported to the NROTC unit in August. Between the time I left Idaho and the time I arrived in Rochester, I learned that I had been advanced to EM2 from the advancement exam I had taken in January. Right after signing those papers, I got to sign the papers swearing me in as a midshipman and then the papers releasing me from active enlisted duty. Notice that the order of signing WAS significant!
After four relatively uneventful years at Rochester, I was commissioned as an Ensign on May 9, 1981. The only really significant event of the period took place in December 1980. I was called into one of the offices and told to get ready for a trip to Crystal City. "Crystal where?" I asked. Well, that was where Adm. Rickover lived. I said that I didn't want to be a nuke anymore, I wanted to be in the civil engineering corp. The response was "We aren't asking, we are telling. You are going for an interview." So I reported to Crystal City for the interviews. For anyone that hasn't gone through the interviews, there were a series of three (or more) technical interviews before you get to see the admiral. Now, I hadn't done real well in my calculus courses (D+ average) and thought I was out for sure, since the nuclear program required a C+ or better. So what did all my technical interviews revolve around? You guessed it - calculus. After going through that for about 6 hours, you are put in line to see the admiral. I was greeted by an officer (in civies) and escorted into the office. Now, this was about the time that StarWars and Empire Strikes Back were big. I got into the office and all I saw was this huge desk with a head behind it, a shock of white hair askew on top. All I could think of was "how did Yoda get here?" I got into the chair and the admiral started. "How long have you been interested in nuclear power?" "about 6 years" "So you've been interested in nuclear power for 6 years. What did you do about it?" "I went to the navy recruiter's office..." "So, you talked to a sailor?" "Well, yes, I guess you could put it that way." "Did you talk to an officer?" "No." "So, you were interested in nuclear power and talked to a sailor, but didn't bother to talk to an officer. No sane man would believe this bullshit you just laid on me. Do you expect me to believe it?" (At this point, it was either back down and contradict everything I had said, or call him insane.) I said "Yes sir!" "Get the hell out of my office, right now!". The officer escorts me out and says "Wait here, I'll calm the admiral down." About 2 minutes later, I was invited back into the office. "The captain here explained to me about you being prior enlisted. Why didn't you explain that to me?" "Because...(I was going to say because you didn't give me a chance, but only got out the one word)" "Are you married?" "No" "That's all. Get out." End of interview. Realize that it took you longer to read this than the interview itself took. I was escorted up to the next floor and was greeted with "Congratulations, you are going to nuke school!" (Oh rats, did I mess up, or what?)
Anyway, back to 1981. After commissioning, I was sent directly back to Idaho Falls to qualify as an EOOW on the same plant I had come from 4 years earlier. I guess that they thought that I didn't need nuke school again, since I had finished 3rd in the electricians at Mare Island. I finished qualifying only behind LCDR Brent Bennett (who later was the CO of an aircraft carrier). Reported to SubBase New London for Sub school and finished that in late April 1982. I then reported to the gold crew of USS Will Rogers (SSBN 659). Just before I left sub school, I was invited to a party at the XO's house as a welcome aboard gesture. There, I met my new boss. The first thing he said to me was "report to the off-crew office on Monday to get your qual cards. You are dink." Nice way to welcome the brand new ensign aboard. No "How do you do?" or "Nice to meet you." Just a message that you are a FLOB (Free Loading Oxygen Breather.) Set the tone for the rest of my tour with this particular engineer.
After reporting to the Willy R., I was designated as the IC Division Officer. Along with my duties of qualifying as EOOW and other watch stations, I had to run the division. We had two long standing problems that other division officers had not been able to fix and I was determined to get to the bottom of them. One was the DRAI (Dead Reckoning Analyzer Indicator). It ran backwards, but only on one axis. Everything was cool north-south, but east-west was reversed. This prevented us from just rotating the whole table. I was assured by the LPO that they had tried everything and nothing worked. I asked to look at the prints, studied them for a while, and then told him to swap a couple of leads. He said he'd tried that already. I told him to amuse me and try it again. Voila! It worked. One problem down, one to go. The other problem was a little more serious. We had a short in the cabling to the head valve electrodes. The electrodes were designed to sense that the head valve was being dunked and to close the valve. When it was shorted out, it never got it's signal through and the valve never closed. Not good, because you had a tendency to put water in the people tank through a rather large hole. This problem took two patrols to fix. At one point, I was a little exasperated and told the captain that I had a solution. He asked what it was. I told him that I wanted to put the IC LPO on the top of the snorkel mast with a pair of sound-powered phones. When you heard him gurgle, close the head valve. The captain smiled and told me that a division officer was supposed to protect his men, not offer them up for sacrifice. But he never bugged me about the head valve again. Later that patrol, we finally got a good set of electrodes that stayed good.
The only really lasting contribution I made to the Willy R was also during this period. Most of you probably know that, at least in the 640 class boomers, there was no real diving klaxon. There was a diving alarm which was generated from the ANWIC stack. It sounded strangely like a sick cow. The captain expressed his desire to me to have a "real" diving alarm. Therefore, when we were tied up to the tender in Holy Loch, I set out to locate a klaxon. I located one in the IC shop on the tender. I bartered with the LPO in the shop and we finally decided that I would get the klaxon if he got a box of Victoria cookies. (You could get almost anything with Victoria cookies. Similarly, you could get anything at the Brit sub base at Faslane with a 20 pound tin of coffee.) Anyway, I got the klaxon and he got the cookies. At least for a little while. When I brought the klaxon down to the control room, it was the standard navy haze gray color. The captain told me that traditionally, diving klaxons were painted dark green. I went back up to the IC shop to locate a can of green paint. It was lunch time, and the shop had been left unlocked. I located the can of paint and was about to leave when I spied the box of cookies laying on the bench, unguarded. I figured that the cookies couldn't have been that important if they had been left unsecured, so I had lunch. To be fair, I did leave a couple of cookies for the men in the shop. Later, I painted the klaxon and had it mounted to the aft end of the BCP. From that point forward, to my knowledge, Will Rogers was the only boat in the squadron that had a real diving klaxon. I wonder what happened to it after decommissioning.
For the next two patrols, I was the RCA. Life was as normal as can be on a submarine at sea, except for a single event during the last patrol. We were conducting drills one day as part of a workup for ORSE. We had done a number of scrams and the battery had about 4000 amp hours out. Capacity was somewhere around 5000 amp hours. The last scam of the day was for the trainees to get some signoffs for quals. We had trainees everywhere, including the RPCP, in AMR2UL, and the EOOW (I was the EOOW of record). We initiated the scram and commenced a recovery. Things went kind of slow because of the trainees everywhere. The battery is clicking away. Things are getting hot. Power is drifting lower and lower in the intermediate range. The RO trainee latches rods and commences to drive rods IN. The RO slaps him side the head and says "OUT, NOT IN!" The trainee starts to pull rods when we get an RPAC alarm. The EOOW trainee turns to me and says "Is that normal?" I said "no...." and we start the ride. Turned out that one of the intermediate range nuclear instruments had died and we were never low enough in power to know about it until now. The engine room is getting VERY hot now, the battery is clicking away (about 4500 amp hours out now) and the MGs are overloading. The OOD orders "Commence snorkeling!" The diesel starts and then shuts down. The captain says "OOD - broach the ship!" so we won't dunk the head valve. We finally get the diesel started. The MGs are still overloading so I ask permission to cross-tie the TG busses to unload the MGs. The engineer refused, since he was paranoid about flooding in the aft escape trunk when the TG tie bus was energized and disabling the entire electric plant. The captain comes back and asks why the MGs are overloaded and why I haven't energized the tie bus. I explained and he left. A couple minutes later, the engineer ordered me to energize the tie bus. I finally got the MGs unloaded, got an air conditioning plant running, and actually started a battery charge on the diesel. (When's the last time a nuke boat did that?) We ended up setting cold iron watches (remember, we are alert, at sea, on patrol). Eight hours later, we did a pre-crit and startup. That was probably the most exciting watch I ever stood as EOOW.
Now, it was time for us to combine crews for the overhaul. The blue crew brought the boat back from Holy Loch and just before crew combination, were assigned to perform middie ops out in Long Island Sound. During one of the exercises, the blue crew CO decided to run a jam dive drill. He told the midshipman on the stern planes to hold his planes on dive and tell the diving officer that his planes were stuck on dive. However, the CO didn't tell anyone else about the drill. So, the middie did EXACTLY as told and held the planes on full dive - the whole time. Later that afternoon, the gold crew CO read us a sitrep in the off-crew office. These normally start out "Recently, a ship of this force..." Our CO started read "Recently, a Will Rogers of this force exceeded a 45 degree down angle while conducting jam dive drills..." Later, we got the details from the blue crew guys. They didn't know exactly what the angle on the ship had been, but they knew that it had been at least 45 degrees because the SINS and the MK 19 gyro had hit the binnacle stops and scrammed. The stops were at 45 degrees down. Every lube oil sump low level alarm in the engine room had come in. When the throttleman got the back emergency bell, he was slowly answering the bell when the RO stiff armed him and whipped the astern throttles open. The engineer directed the EOOW to reprimand the RO for not minding the panel. So the EOOW says "Reactor operator, you stand reprimanded for not minding your panel during the emergency." The engineer left. The EOOW continued "and I expect you to do it again." The blue crew had to follow another boat back to the sub base since they had no heading information with the SINS and Mk 19 gone.
The blue crew arrived, we combined, did a torpedo and stores offload in New London, and set out for Charleston for missile offload. I was the diving officer coming out of New London. I didn't know it at the time, but the ship's diving officer had miscalculated the change in compensation and we were about 80,000 pounds heavy. Most of you probably know that we submerged at ahead 1/3 and a neutral angle on the boat. Not this time. To quote the XO, "we went down like a streamlined safe." I tried to level at 150 feet. Still going down. Full rise on the fairwater planes. Still going down. "Chief of the watch, commence pumping depth control to sea." Still going down. Up angle on the boat. Still going down. "Officer of the deck, I need speed!" "Chief of the watch, commence pumping with the trim AND the drain pumps." We finally leveled at 180 feet with both pumps pumping, full rise on the fairwater planes, a 10 degree up bubble and ahead full. Needless to say, I checked the compensation when we came out of Charleston.
That brings us up to the overhaul in Newport News, which is another story in itself.
If you have any news that you wish to share, let me know and I will add it here.