Happy Birthday to the United States Navy

[tinymontgomery]

235 Years young today.

[Old Troop]

1. Happy birthday to the second service!!

[tinymontgomery]

2. Can't argue with that

but we're ahead of the Marines and Air Force.

[Old Troop]

4. Your good humor speaks very well of your fine service. I spent a lot

of time working missions with Navy Special Ops boat folks -- some the finest and most courageous people in uniform.

[denbot]

3. Anchors aweigh my friends, anchors aweigh..!

I don't think I ever learned all the words to that song..

[Kaleva]

5. The pic is of an Adams class DDG.

I served on the USS Lawrence DDG-4 in Fox Division so I recognize the 39A search radar, the 51C/D missile directors, the 5" gun mount, and the MK 11 missile launcher.

[denbot]

11. It is a picture of the USS Barney DDG-6

Destroyer Squadron 2, home ported in Norfolk VA, I remember the Lawrence was in the Persian Gulf during the Iranian Hostage Crisis..
When were you onboard?

[Kaleva]

14. I remember the Barney in Norfolk...

and I was on the Lawrence while it was in the Persian Gulf during the hostage crisis. One day we went to GQ for real (heard later an Iranian F-14 was flying towards the ship) and I ran to my post which was the Port Weapons Direction Equipment room. I was the most junior in the work center but the best tech so my job was to be ready to repair any problem with WDE if needed but I was all by myself in that room and had no communications with anyone else unless the operators in CIC spotted a problem which then they'd contact me via the X43J sound powered telephone circuit. Not knowing what was going or if the ship was about to be hit and possibly sunk, I looked around to see if there was a place to hide but there wasn't one. I spotted an orange on the work desk so I decided I might as well sit at the desk and eat the orange while waiting for whatever fate had in store for me.

[denbot]

19. I was an OS on the Barney.

We went to GQ a couple of times.. F-14 "illuminating" us, close low approaches by P-3's. We almost got an exocet fired at us from point blank range by a Omani missile boat skippered by a Brit. The Barney strayed a little bit in to Omani waters and the missile boat challenged us. We insisted that we were in international waters, and the missile boat skipper wanted us to go hard to port and exit Omani waters immediately. We altered our course by a degree or so and slowly eased out of Omani waters, but not before the missile boat skipper announced that he was about to fire, and us telling him we would respond in kind. While this was going on Washington cabled, and we lied about our true position.

The Persian Gulf being what it is I am not surprised that the greatest danger my ship faced was from an ally.

[Name removed]

6. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Aristus]

7. The U.S.S. Constellation. Best name for a ship EVER!

Better than Constitution or Enterprise.

I just love that name...

[Kaleva]

8. The proposed "USS Skeered O' Nothing" had the best name of all

"U.S. Congressman John S. Williams (D-MS) House Minority leader authored a bill to change the name of USS Michigan to USS Skeered O' Nothing. The bill never left committee."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AHMS_Dreadnought_%281906%29

[krispos42]

9. We've come a long way...

:patriot:

[UTUSN]

10. Thanks for the thread, tinymontgomery, & here are my 2 homes- away- from- home

That would be the USS Luzerne County, LST on the left, "Landing Ship, Tank" one of the types used for D-day, which we were using, oh, just 24 years later in Vietnam. But we called it "Large Slow Target." Wiki says the pic dates from 1968, most of which I was aboard it, but I was a Deck Ape, one of my main job tasks being chipping paint, priming, and re-painting, and I swear I never saw that much rust on it when *I* was on board. I was even dangled over the side on a scaffold while on the open ocean and was playfully dipped by my so funny shipmate tending the line. Mostly we carried supplies (huge sacks of concrete, bulldozers) from Saigon down into a Mekong Delta river to drop off at an Army base at Can Tho: The ship is about a football field in length and, yes, the rivers over there were that big. It had a FLAT bottom, for the purpose of "beaching," ramming into the shore, to unload, but the flatness means that when it HIT a wave on the open ocean the bow (front end) would BOUNCE out UP in the air where it would, scarily, VIBRATE like a tuning fork. These things were long, hollow warehouses all their length where the supplies were crammed, and some of them were known to have broken in half. "My" ship had a distinguished record from long before I got there. It was in Korea and then Vietnam and earned something like 17 battlestars, one of the highest totals. We got hit by rockets on three separate days during my year aboard. The "captain" of this kind of ship was actually a Lieutenant, and groups of seven of these were presided over by a "Commodore," a rank revived from the Civil War.

The other one, USS Seattle, was still being finished at the shipyard in Bremerton, WA, for the first 5 months I was aboard. As the first or "commissioning" crew, we were "plank owners," supposedly able to claim a piece of "plank," if we lived long enough for it to be de-commissioned some 30 yrs later. It was an oiler-ammunition ship, basically a floating fuel station for other ships. The other ships would come alongside and we would send over fuel hoses that the other ship would connect and we would pump the fuel. As a new ship, it had to go on its "shake down" cruise, like breaking in a new car, and most of the rest of my year was spent in taking it to its "home port," oh, just on the other side of the continent, Norfolk, VA, so we moseyed down the West Coast, stopped at Acapulco, went through the Panama Canal, did some more training exercises at Gitmo, and, took Liberty at New Orleans and Haiti. Finally stopping at Mayport (Jacksonville), FL, before arriving "home."

There have been some amazing things to me. Hearing what we've heard of Gitmo and Haiti over the past ten years and that I was at those places. And after my one-year tours on each ship, finding out that subsequent crews on the Seattle stayed aboard 3 or 4 years at a time. And that BOTH of my ships have been, not only de-commissioned, but SCRAPPED, incredibly.

To add what some might find an unpleasant detail, as I seem incapable of not doing, or, actually TWO: A few years ago at a flea market I had a ballcap on with my LST logo and "Vietnam Veteran" on it and saw an elderly vendor with a U.S. Navy logo ball cap, and I stuck out my hand for a handshake and greeted him as "shipmate". He didn't extend his hand and said, "I was in WW II, the REAL war." I FORCIBLY grabbed his hand and said, "Give me your F***ing hand!1" The other incident was perhaps MY crappy response: A dude approached me and said, "Welcome home," which I've mainly gotten from wingnuts and chickenhawks, and I was taken by surprise, since I sometimes forget I've got the caps on, and said, "I've been home for 30 years." He said something about the Vietnam non-welcome back then. I said, "Well, I was at my home away from home." Yeah-yeah, sometimes I'm gracious and just let it go with a thank-you.

[Dr Morbius]

13. May the wind be ever at your back.

[UTUSN]

15. Why, THANKS for that!1 n/t

[Kaleva]

12. I don't miss those days of no showers or clean clothes

When one walked into a berthing compartment, you had to breathe thru your mouth until you got used to the awful stench. One day at sea, I got the idea of dragging my laundry bag in the wake off the stern. Found out later that salt encrusted skivvies (underwear) gave me a bad rash so later I'd just wash my work pants and shirts in the wake while washing my socks and skivvies with the fresh water I stored in 5 gallon buckets in my workspace.

[UTUSN]

16. Wow, WE did that on the LST

Mostly the dungarees, tying a line to them and throwing them off the fantail to be dragged and pounded by the wake. You're the first other I've heard mention that. We never ran out of water for drinking or showering. I don't know whether we had run out of water for laundry or why else we did that a few times. Maybe it was some of the Old Salts teaching us tradition.

[Kaleva]

17. We were almost always out of water.

Even for drinking but bug juice and coffee was always available on the mess decks. The evaporators were very finiky and what fresh water they were able to make had to go for the boilers. When we pulled out of Norfolk the word passed after "Now secure the sea and anchor detail. Set the normal underway watch." was "Fresh water is secured throughout the ship.". If we were on our way to the Med, we wouldn't be able to take a shower again till the ship got to Rota, Spain. When we hit a rainstorm, sometime topside showers were allowed and there'd be a bunch of us naked sailors running around topside in the rain trying to wash our privates as best as we could.

[Kaleva]

18. Using the After Head was an experience too

As I was in Fox Division, I bunked in Weapons Berthing and we used the After Head along with Supply Dept. and Engineering Dept.. In rough weather, the toilets would back up and overflow and there'd be a hell of a mess sloshing on the deck of the head. I usually entered the head on the starboard side so I had to time my run to the nearest toilet or urinal just right. When the ship rolled to port, I'd make my move and get to the nearest toilet, pull down my pants, sit and then lift up my legs as the ship then rolled to starboard and the liquid mess on the deck flowed past me. I could set my legs down for a bit till the ship rolled to port. Wiping one's butt while your legs were up in the air is a task for the young and nimble. Taking a piss was easier. Just make the run to the urinal when the ship rolled to port, piss as fast as I could, then run out of the head when the ship rolled to starboard. If I didn't finish in time, I'd run out of the head and repeat the process when the ship rolled back to port.