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16
UNIT AWARDS & CITATIONS
Armed Forces Expeditionary Medals (3),Combat Action Ribbon (1),Naval Meritorious Unit Citations
(2),Republic of Vietnam Meitorious Unit Citation - Gallantry (6) & Vietnam Service Medals (4).
The second Dynamic (AM 432) was launched 17 December 1952 by Colberg Boat Works, Stockton, Calif.;
sponsored by Mrs. R. W. Harbey; and commissioned 15 December 1953, Lieutenant Commander J. F. Butler in command. She was reclassified
MS0-432 on 7 February 1955.
Assigned to Mine Division 91, Squadron 9, Mine Force Pacific Fleet, Dynamic operated out of her
home port of Long Beach, Calif., that included training with other ships, aircraft, soldiers and Marines and with minesweepers
of other navies. She cruised to the Far East in 1957-58 visiting ports in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, and participated in minesweeping
exercises with ships of the Chinese Nationalist and Korean navies. She made a similar cruise in the first half of 1960, joined
the other fleet units in the "Pacific Festival" at San Francisco in September and received a yard overhaul during the remainder
of the year.
1957-1958
I don't recall when we left Long Beach, but we started back in JAN58. A
lot of Blood Alley patrolling. We hit Taipeh and Kao Hsiung on Taiwan and also Hong Kong. One day while we were in Hong Kong
we were,for whatever reason, listing to radio Peiping (now Beijing). There was an English language propaganda broadcast on,
telling us all about how the Soviets invented the telephone and electric lights and
the steam locomotive and cars and
aircraft and and radio and TV everything else worth having. (Remember when they used to do that?) We cracked up laughing when
they finished their broadcast by announcing that they had launched a satellite into space, which they called a Sputnik. The
laughter stopped when we found out that they really had done this.
While in Japan, we spent most of our time in Sasebo,
but also visited Kagoshima, Beppu, Kobe, Nagoya, Yokosuka, and I think someplace else but can't recall the name.
We
also went on a mine-sweeping exercise off Korea, near an island named Yokchi Do. This was called off because of bad weather.I
was on radar watch when we set the sea detail and left because we were dragging the anchor and drifting into a dangerous area.Aubert
had me draw a circle around our location at, if I recall, a distance of 500 yards. I was to awaken him when we crossed over
the line. The weather was so bad that the guys on the deck force each got a shot of whiskey when they were finished raising
the anchor.I was so nervous and scared for so long that I could have used one,
also, but did not get one. When my watch
was over, I went below and barfed.
We also hit Osaka around Christmas 1957. We had a dinner party on the ship for a bunch of orphan boys.And
it was cold at night, down around zero degrees Fahrenheit on New Year's Eve.
Something else funny----When we
were in Beppu, we were anchored out rather than tied up to a pier. Somebody decided that we would practice practice getting
the ship underway with only one third of the crew on board. I was alone in the radar shack, trying to navigate, keep track
of nearby ships, talk on the radio and write down all the messages, make soundings so we could tell how deep the
water
was and report the soundings to the bridge. Besides that, I had to write down every bearing I took on the radar, every depth
sounding, and everything else I did....... quite a lot of responsibility for three people, let alone only one person. Later,
the executive officer, Lt. Stuart, came down and complimented me on doing a good job.
Anyhow, all of a sudden there was
a horrendous roaring sound and the ship started shaking itself apart. I jumped a mile and was ready to throw myself overboard.
Somebody had ordered aninexperienced sailor to drop the anchor. Well, he sure did!Instead of dropping the hook slowly and
carefully, he spun the wheel all the way open. Somebody told me that it looked like the Fourth of July; there were sparks
flying thirty feet out of the hawse pipe when all the chain ran through it.
In case you did not know, the MSO was the smallest ship that the Navy would allow to cross
the ocean under its own power. Smaller ships were transported inside "floating dry docks".
Anyhow, in January,1958, the Dynamic, Conflict, Persistent and three other MSO’s were scheduled to leave Yokosuka,
Japan, and head back to Long Beach. There was a wild typhoon raging, allegedly the worst typhoon since WWII, in which some
USN destroyers were sunk. Nobody in his right mind would have ordered us to get underway, and the captains offered no
resistance to this dangerous undertaking.
Each ship had many extra barrels of diesel oil lashed down on the fantail (the deck at the back of the ship) Everything
was lashed down....except the crew members.
So we got underway. Tokyo Bay was rough, as rough as I had ever seen anywhere out on the open sea in the Pacific.
Of the six MSO’s that started out, three turned back before we had even cleared Tokyo Bay. One of them reported
that, instead of pumping sea water out of the
bilges, somebody had pumped most of their fuel overboard. Another
reported that their barrels of fuel had broken loose and were rolling all over the deck. I don't know why the third one turned
back. Every time one of the ships turned back, I was hoping that we would be next. If we thought Tokyo Bay was rough,
that was nothing compared to what lay ahead! Probably the only thing that kept us afloat was the small size of the ship. A
larger ship would have encountered two waves at a time and would likely have sunk. The MSO was so small that we bobbed up
and down on each wave as it came along.
Another stupidity which we had to endure was the dropping of a BT (bathythermograph) every four
hours. The BT is a thermometer which records water temperatures and depth on a smoked glass slide. It is lowered over
the side of the ship on a steel cable to a depth of three hundred feet. The date, time, latitude and longitude is written
on each slide after the BT drop. When a box of slides is filled up, it is sent to somebody in the Pentagon or somewhere, who
probably just throws it away.
Anyhow, I was sent out the first or second evening to make a BT drop. (The BT is about three feet long,
looks sort of like a rocket, and is fairly heavy) I dropped the thing to three hundred feet, but was unable to retrieve
it, as the cable was hung up on something Terrified that the silly thing was wrapped around the propeller shaft, I reported
this incident to the bridge. Anyhow, the next day, the BT was found up on the main deck, farther aft of the station where
I had dropped it. It must have been washed up onto the deck when the ship rolled. There were no more BT drops made on
that trip.
The radar was almost useless. The waves were so huge and they gave back so many false echos
that it was almost impossible to tell if another ship had been stupid enough to travel in that storm.
We finally got to Midway Island, which at that time was a top- secret base and NOBODY except USN
ships was allowed anywhere near. (Midway is now a bird sanctuary) We were astonished to see a WWII Liberty ship there,
flying the flag of the USSR. The Russki captain had reported that the ship was in immediate danger of sinking, and called
for help. After much debate among politicians in the USA and the USSR, the ship was allowed into Midway. The USA was afraid
that the Russians would photograph everything on the island, and the Russkis were afraid that we were going to confiscate
the ship, since it had been on loan to the USSR since WWII and we might want it back. This incident made a huge flap
all over the media in the USA, and we were there to witness it. Big deal, right?
We spent a day, maybe two days, in Midway. The sea calmed down quite a bit in that time. The trip
to Pearl Harbor was a little rough, but not unbearable. After a few more days at Pearl, the Pacific had calmed down almost
to normal, so the rest of the trip home was uneventful.
John Quest SO2
USS DYNAMIC MSO-432 spent 74 days on one patrol. She was replenished underway 27 times in order
to sustain her operations which covered 9000 miles within the inspection zone.
MARKET TIME units participated in four
search and rescue operations during June 1966. On 6 June, USS Fortify (MSO 446), USS Dynamic (MSO 432), PCF 45 and PCF 51
conducted SAR operations following a collision between two Vietnamese civilian junks off Ban Than Point just north of Nha
Trang. Five survivors were recovered.
Casulties
12/05/65 - EM3 Jimmy Don Hyde, Caddo, OK - [MIA South China Sea]
05/06/68
- LCDR William J. Pritchard, Lancaster, CA - 1110 [South China Sea - Quang Nam Province]
Dynamic was commissioned in December 1953 after extensive sea trials,and home ported in Long Beach.She
spent her time operating off the California coast until August 1957.
At this time she made her first Wespac cruise.On this tour she visited many major ports of Japan,Formosa,South
Korea and Hong Kong.
Dynamic made other deployments to Wespac in January 1962 and the full of 1965,when as a unit of
MinDiv 91 she spent ten and a half months off the coast of Vietnam on Market Time operations,a coastal surveillance operations.
Dynamic then went into Harbor Boat Building Co. in Long Beach for a major overhaul and facelift.The
SQQ-14, variable depth sonar was added,which added to her versatility as an ocean going minesweeper.
Dynamic agian deployed to WesPac in November 1967 as a unit of MinDiv 71,besides Market Time deployment
she was called upon to perform in search and salvage operations for downed aircraft using the SQQ-14 Sonar.Both times sucess
was accomplished much more rapidly than was thought possible.
Her present deployment began in February 1967; an eighth month Wespac deployment began where she
again participated in Market Time operations.The many varied missions assigned Dynamic has earned her the reputation of the
"Can-Do" MSO.The credit must go to the officers and men whose positive attitude reduce a difficult job to a accurite and swift
performance.
Sent in by Richard A. Rentschler.
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