Now
prior to the publication of "Blind mans bluff" you couldn't have gotten a word of this
out of me, even if you stuck bamboo under my fingernails. But, WTF! They
spilled the beans about Cold War activities, they cracked Pandora's box,
not me! Even so, there will be no dates, no locations, nothing of interest
to the spys of the world. Just the little "high-lights" of
the cruise as I remember them.
" The Fisherman"
As an ST I got to be in on lots that went on that others weren't. I was
on watch when the Conn kept asking me about a certain contact. At first
I just reported what they wanted, but after the umpteenth time even a
numb-nutted Sonar Girl begins to wonder what's going on. "Sonar-Conn,
what's Serria-14 doing now?" "Conn-Sonar, S-14 is still a working
fisherman, diesel engine, four-bladed screw, sounds like he's all head
full at the moment. There, now he's at all stop. Geez, now he's backing
down full. Sounds like he's working to me." "Sonar-Conn, Aye." Little
did I know at the time that we had gone bow first straight into this
unfortunate fishermans net!!! And we were at the moment dragging him
backwards through the ocean at about three-knots!! No wonder he was working
so hard trying to free himself from God knew what! Capt. Gleason ordered "All
Stop, All back one-third!" As he tried to extracate us from the
net, hoping it wouldn't foul on the forward PUFFS dome. We backed for
what seemed forever, before a quick check with Sonar showed that we had
gone right under him and he was now well away from us, clear or not,
we didn't know. A ten-degree down angle was ordered, right-full rudder,
all-ahead two-thirds!!!! We held our collective breath, would we pull
the poor bastard under, or would he be able to cut his cables clear if
we were still in his net?
As far as I know, we escaped without creating an international incident!!
And the fisherman lived to tell one hell of a fish story!!!!!!!!
"The fishing float"
I only found out about this incident after it happened. It seems that
during a quick sweep-around with the scope the Conning Officer spotted
the same large (make that !LARGE!) fishing float he'd seen before
was in the same relative position astern of us! Upon closer examination
it was obvious that the float was following us at our same speed!!
Oh Shit! To make matters worse, the float was topped with a mast
and flags. Up until now I have assumed that YOU know what a Sneaky
Boo is, if you don't, then you probably shouldn't be reading this
BBS, but I'll clue you in anyway. Simply put, it means we were conducting
a clandestine, cold war operation in unfriendly waters. Not exactly
the sort of place where you want a bouy with a freaking flag on it
tied to your ass!! We very slowly went way out to sea, surfaced decks
just awash and sent some poor bastard out to cut the thing adrift.
I heard it was too big to fit down the hatch, or we'd have had a
hell of a souvenir!!!
"The periscope incident"
I was lucky enough to be a part of this escapade, sitting on the deck
up in the Conn shooting the shit with "Boge" who had the
Conn. Capt. Gleason climbed up the ladder and told "Boge" that
he was going to take a quick look around on the scope. "Yes
Sir." "Boge" dutifully replied. I hauled my legs up
underneath me to get the hell out of the way in case the Captain
made a full sweep around. He was standing directly opposite me as
he raised the scope and followed the eye piece up in the very best
WWII tradition. I watched as he quickly rotated the handle that controlled
the high and low power lens. Then just as quickly he reached up and
yanked on the ring around the scope that lowered it, hissing into
its well. Capt. Joe (a.k.a. El Supermo and Numero Uno) twisted his
head toward the hatch leading down to Control and bellowed "Ten
degree down angle, right full rudder, all ahead two-thirds!!" I
could tell he was excited by whatever he'd seen. Excitement in fact
gripped every man on watch, the Captain hadn't even gone through
the proceedure of reliving "Boge" of the Conn, he'd just
yelled orders to the chief of the watch and answers to those orders
were quick in coming back up to him. (I was more than a little excited
as I knew we were in about one-hundred and sixty-five feet of water
and figured that the bottom wasn't far away at two-thirds speed and
a ten degree down angle!) Just as suddenly the Captain leveled the
boat off and we hurried away into the darkness of "inner-space". "What
the hell happened Captain?" "Boge" asked, more than
a little interested in why his watch position had been usurped so
unceremoniously. Capt. Joe looked at him, "When the scope broke
water all I could see was three guys standing at the rail of a sailing
vessel pointing at me!! They were so close that I thought the scope
was on high power and I automatically rolled the handle in the opposite
direction. THAT put the scope in high and all I could see was teeth!" He
announced with emotion. We escaped into the depths once again!!!!
"The Reef"
"
AC" Mary- ST1/SS, Bill Finley STS2/SS "Fat Frank" Rowden
STS3/SS, Geo. Mootrey ST3/SS, Jim Petty STS3/SS and I were engrossed
in some worldly discussion in the Sonar Shack when Capt. Joe came in
waving a chart at most of us. "Everybody out except Mary and Burleigh." The
other guys cleared out and shut the door. (You remember that door,
the one with the dead light with Snoopy sleeping on top of his dog
house painted on it so you couldn't see in real well.) The Captain
unrolled his chart. Pointing to a spot among several islands he announced, "We're
right here!" "Holy shit!" I countered, "What in
hell are we doing there?" All I got was a very "Captain-like" look.
He continued, "We have received intel advising us to vacate the
area "post haste". (Evidently our unsuspecting host country
wasn't so unsuspecting and had designs on locating us, to what end
none of us wanted to entertain.) Capt. Gleason then pointed to a small
circle drawn in dots on the chart. Looking closely I saw the words, "Breakers
reported - 1910." (We didn't exactly have updated charts of our
area of interest, as our countries hadn't been "buddies" for
an extended period of time. Therefore we hadn't shared oceanographical
information as we would with more friendly folks.) Captain Joe went
on, "Can you guys find this reef without active sonar including
the fathometer? Our only escape route takes us right by that location
and I don't want to run into it!" Art and I discussed the possibilities.
The water we were in was filthy. So we figured that if the sunlight
could penatrate at all, there would be increased biologics (sea critters,
to you Snipes) which contribute to the overall background noise we
encountered everyday as Sonarmen. "Yes, Captain, we think we'll
be able to hear an increase in background noise at that location. Can
you rig the boat for silent running, then go ahead as fast as you want,
coming to all-stop and coasting for a minute every few minutes, allowing
us to listen closely during those quiet times?" "Sounds good
to me." was all he said as he rolled up the chart and left us
staring at each other. "Think we can do it?" I asked "AC". "Shit,
I sure hope so!" He replied.
The 1MC came on, "Now rig the boat for silent running." The
7MC announced, "Sonar-Conn, we believe the reef bears zero-three-zero
relative." "Sonar, aye, Conn, we're listening." Sure
enough, on about the third "stop" Art and I heard the unmistakable
crackling of shrimp found in shallow waters. We tracked it closely
and Conn plotted our reported position, finding it to be only a short
distance from the reported breakers on the old chart. We escaped once
again, leaving the evil ones thwarted in their efforts to subdue American
Submarines lurking off their coasts.
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