SAN DIEGO – With August madcap doings in the Southwest corner, I postponed my trip back home and missed a unique reunion in Newport, R.I.
Several sailors from my first ship, the U.S.S. Hawkins (DD 873) held an ad hoc reunion in Newport, RI. I was honored they asked me to join as they had been enlisted and I had been a junior officer. Allen Ernst, my leading sonar technician when I was Anti-Submarine (ASW) Officer, had found me in the intergalactic space of the internet about a year ago. I suspect he instigated including me.
Regardless, Allen, Robin Lewis, and Norm O’Neal took the lead, and R.J. Beihl, Bill Durbrow, Bill Carey, Bruce Coulture, and Rik Tuinstra completed the group.
They sent pictures and reports. Then last week, Allen forwarded me an email train from a discussion they had had at the reunion. The email detailed an incident I will never forget, including a seven page breakdown of the Navy investigation.
After completing a major overhaul in February, 1969, the “Hawkins” sailed to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for “refresher training,” two-months of intense exercises to get the ship’s company back up to speed before operations.
Submarine Exercises
ASW exercises with a real submarine were included. The U.S.S. Chopper (SS-342) was assigned to Guantanamo for these exercises.
The ASW exercises were actually a respite for me. Other duties required grueling 18-hour days. The ASW part was exciting and fun, and my first with a real sub.
Hawkins stood out of the channel February 11 and conducted engineering drills in the morning. General Quarters 1A (for ASW operations) was set immediately after the morning drills. I moved from the bridge to the small ASW/Sonar space in the after section of Combat Information Center (CIC). There was no time for lunch.
Quicker than expected, we gained sonar contact and began to track the Chopper.
Just finding a submarine with sonar remains magic to me. The sonar transmits sound beams, and if the beams hit the submarine, the returning echo alerts the sonar crew to the contact.
By maintaining contact, a good sonar team can track the sub, deducing course and speed and producing a solution to fire an anti-submarine weapon, such as a torpedo with some probability of actually hitting the submarine.
This did not occur often. We spent more time talking to the whales on “Gertrude,” our underwater telephone designed to communicate with other Navy ships and submarines, than actually locating submarines.
A Disappearing Contact
But this particular afternoon, we had good luck, establishing solid contact. We could actually see the submarine blip turning in circles on our fire control system.
Then the blip became progressively weaker and disappeared. We were stumped as to the cause, wondering what kind of maneuver the Chopper could have employed.
Within two minutes, the bridge reported the Chopper had shot almost completely out of the water, 100 yards off of our starboard beam, crashing back into the sea. It disappeared again briefly before bobbing to the surface.
The Chopper had lost its generator and electrical DC power. The sub’s down angle had increased to 15 degrees, then to 45 degrees and beyond. She had plummeted to over 1,000 feet below the ocean’s surface, dangerously close to her “crush depth.”
The emergency actions of the sub’s personnel finally took effect. The Chopper ceased its descent and began to rise. The crew couldn’t control the reverse ascent, and the sub was almost vertical in the water when it cleared the surface. She re-submerged to about 250 feet before finally bobbing to the surface.
No Injuries, But a Great Sea Story
Amazingly, she returned to port under her own power. The ensuing investigation determined she had suffered structural damage, and the “Chopper” was decommissioned a year later.
More amazing, no one received any critical injuries. This is even more startling in that the report reveals steel deck plates were not secured and were crashing about during the violent descent and ascent along with anything not tied down. The officers and crew carried out emergency procedures 90 degrees off the normal plane. It would be like doing house work in an emergency mode standing on the wall instead of the floor with furniture flying around.
The Chopper was just one of many impactful incidents during my Hawkins tour with those sailors. It was quite an introduction to anti-submarine warfare for this young officer.
I am still amazed.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Monday, August 30, 2010
Squared away memories
SAN DIEGO - Recently, J.B. Leftwich began a feature in his column I like called "Person of the Past."
Reading about Bill Baird, Waldo Seat, and others has brought fond memories.
Additionally, two "Democrat" news items told of the "Capitol Theater" renovation and a new shop locating in the square. The thrust of these additions is unclear to me from the Southwest comer. But the Lebanon square of the past is a living entity in my mind, with a vibrancy and identity of its own. It's my "Place of the Past."
Considering my fuzzy memory, I called my expert back home to fill blanks. Estelle Jewell, my mother, gave me a detailed account of the square's buildings and their occupants from the 1930s through the early 1960s.
So this is not a one-column feature. It will be continued.
In my mind, the square was the center of the universe. Nashville was a maze of monoliths a day's journey to the west, not of my world. Everything happened on or adjacent to the square. If you banked, needed hardware, had to have a prescription filled, needed new clothes, were getting a photograph made, had to replace shoes, required some general merchandise, or wanted to dine, the Lebanon square was the starting and end point. There were some outliers, but even they were nearly all adjacent to the square.
Two banks occupied east and south exit comers of the square. There were no drive-through teller windows and, until savings and loan places cropped up, everyone did their banking on the square.
The Lebanon Bank was located at the exit to South Cumberland across from the courthouse. The Commerce Union Bank, where my mother had her first full-time job after high school in 1935, occupied the north comer at the exit onto East Main.
The seat of government, the county courthouse oversaw the square affairs with its dominating presence, occupying the entire the southwest side of the square in its regal impartiality, a yellow-brick road to justice with worn out concrete steps into and center-worn wooden steps up to the courtrooms.
I associate smells as much as sight or sound with the court house. There was a dusty lingering of cigar smoke in those high ceilinged halls and offices overwhelmed with oak file cabinets. Julius Williams, the chancery court clerk, occupied a first floor office with tall, single pane windows. Mrs. Lucy Cummings, his secretary, tutored my mother in shorthand during part-time work in high school. She taught Estelle Jewell shorthand and let her use the office typewriter to learn to type (around 80 words a minute, as I recall) from a typing book.
I remember visiting that room and feeling like one should not talk in such an official, cavernous place of justice and records.
Later, my mother worked for Curry Dotson, the long-time county court clerk.
Court house recollection is not complete without mention of the older men sitting outside chewing, whittling and philosophizing.
Two drug stores, Bradshaw's and Shannon's stood almost opposite of each other across the square before grocery chains had their own pharmacies and drug stores were not the chain department-store giants with drive-by windows. Bradshaw's had aisles of stuff but mostly un-interesting to a young boy. However, I distinctly remember my mouth watering at the thought of a cream filled chocolate when buying a box of assorted candy.
Shannon's was an old-style drug store, located on the southeast side. When my mother was working on the square (she worked at four different jobs on the square), she would lunch on a ham sandwich for a dime and drink a coke for a nickel at Shannon's counter. Later, it was the first place I have ever had a cherry coke. For someone my age, it was the nectar of the gods.
Until the late 1950's, the Lebanon square was Lebanon itself. Everything emanated from the square. "Going to town" meant going to the square.
Recently, we visited members of my wife's family in Prescott, AZ. The square there is much larger than Lebanon's square. The vast and imposing gray courthouse sits in the middle: Yet Prescott's square induced me to recall Lebanon's square. In Prescott, the square remains the heart, the core of the city.
Ah, but they cannot look upon General Hatton in their square.
To be continued...
Reading about Bill Baird, Waldo Seat, and others has brought fond memories.
Additionally, two "Democrat" news items told of the "Capitol Theater" renovation and a new shop locating in the square. The thrust of these additions is unclear to me from the Southwest comer. But the Lebanon square of the past is a living entity in my mind, with a vibrancy and identity of its own. It's my "Place of the Past."
Considering my fuzzy memory, I called my expert back home to fill blanks. Estelle Jewell, my mother, gave me a detailed account of the square's buildings and their occupants from the 1930s through the early 1960s.
So this is not a one-column feature. It will be continued.
In my mind, the square was the center of the universe. Nashville was a maze of monoliths a day's journey to the west, not of my world. Everything happened on or adjacent to the square. If you banked, needed hardware, had to have a prescription filled, needed new clothes, were getting a photograph made, had to replace shoes, required some general merchandise, or wanted to dine, the Lebanon square was the starting and end point. There were some outliers, but even they were nearly all adjacent to the square.
Two banks occupied east and south exit comers of the square. There were no drive-through teller windows and, until savings and loan places cropped up, everyone did their banking on the square.
The Lebanon Bank was located at the exit to South Cumberland across from the courthouse. The Commerce Union Bank, where my mother had her first full-time job after high school in 1935, occupied the north comer at the exit onto East Main.
The seat of government, the county courthouse oversaw the square affairs with its dominating presence, occupying the entire the southwest side of the square in its regal impartiality, a yellow-brick road to justice with worn out concrete steps into and center-worn wooden steps up to the courtrooms.
I associate smells as much as sight or sound with the court house. There was a dusty lingering of cigar smoke in those high ceilinged halls and offices overwhelmed with oak file cabinets. Julius Williams, the chancery court clerk, occupied a first floor office with tall, single pane windows. Mrs. Lucy Cummings, his secretary, tutored my mother in shorthand during part-time work in high school. She taught Estelle Jewell shorthand and let her use the office typewriter to learn to type (around 80 words a minute, as I recall) from a typing book.
I remember visiting that room and feeling like one should not talk in such an official, cavernous place of justice and records.
Later, my mother worked for Curry Dotson, the long-time county court clerk.
Court house recollection is not complete without mention of the older men sitting outside chewing, whittling and philosophizing.
Two drug stores, Bradshaw's and Shannon's stood almost opposite of each other across the square before grocery chains had their own pharmacies and drug stores were not the chain department-store giants with drive-by windows. Bradshaw's had aisles of stuff but mostly un-interesting to a young boy. However, I distinctly remember my mouth watering at the thought of a cream filled chocolate when buying a box of assorted candy.
Shannon's was an old-style drug store, located on the southeast side. When my mother was working on the square (she worked at four different jobs on the square), she would lunch on a ham sandwich for a dime and drink a coke for a nickel at Shannon's counter. Later, it was the first place I have ever had a cherry coke. For someone my age, it was the nectar of the gods.
Until the late 1950's, the Lebanon square was Lebanon itself. Everything emanated from the square. "Going to town" meant going to the square.
Recently, we visited members of my wife's family in Prescott, AZ. The square there is much larger than Lebanon's square. The vast and imposing gray courthouse sits in the middle: Yet Prescott's square induced me to recall Lebanon's square. In Prescott, the square remains the heart, the core of the city.
Ah, but they cannot look upon General Hatton in their square.
To be continued...
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