this is Bones (Albert Praeger) I was the snot nosed kid (19) who served with you from 1961 to 1963.
We
played a lot of acey-ducey (I always won). The time capsule idea is great, I have a lot of slides of our trip to Australia
in 1962. Pictures of BBQ's at sea,crossing the equator initiation, Hong Kong etc.
I also have my original quacard but
I don't think I could part with it. Here are some of the stories I remember.
FUN STUFF:
1.
While mess cooking for Shaky Jake I remember one morning our COB Dexter sitting down to breakfast with a horrible hangover,
he looked like shit, he tried to put butter on his toast but the butter was rock hard. The startup mess cook (thank god it
wasn't me) forgot to set out the butter. Dexter said "God damn you, I told you before to take out the butter, give me your
liberty card". He tore it up and threw it one the floor.
And that was that.
2. Swakhammer was down in the cool
box trying to get some milk, he starts yelling " help-help I'm stuck, I'm stuck. When we looked down to see what was going
on. Swakhammer's glasses had fallen off and he was standing on his hand. My stomach hurt after that one.
3. I was
standing STBD lookout at night, you could look down the hatch in to the con from where I was perched. The OD (can't remember
his name) wanted a cup of coffee, he called the steward and ordered coffee. The sea was kinda rolling and the steward spilled
a little out of the cup, the OD yelled " I said a cup of coffee not a partial cup". The steward left---- minuets later he
was at the bottom of the ladder. At first he didn't see me as he took a large mouth full of coffee and proceeded to clime
up the ladder. He looked up and our eyes met, he had the biggest grin, he almost let go some coffee but he persevered. Under
the super-structure out of the OD's sight he emptied his mouth full back into the cup, stepped out onto the Bridge and handed
a full cup of coffee to the OD who said "thats better".
4. Alligators in the engine room bilge: We had an air hose in the
bilge and we convinced the stewards that we had live alligators there by blowing airand making a hissing sound. Weeks later
we were having trouble pumping the bilge's and had to clean out the strainers. We found meat scraps stuck all over the strainers.
Those guys were feeding the alligators, Ha.
SERIOUS STUFF:
1. Collision with Destroyer sonar dome:
I was mess cooking and the ship was doing
war games. We were making a run on a Carrier, the CO made a periscope sweep and saw a Destroyer bearing down on
us, he ordered Neg. flooded and sounded the collision alarm. I was in the aft torpedo room with a case of bread in my arms.
I heard the alarm and saw the door shut, we immediately took a very large down angle. I thought, oh shit here we go, I thought
about grabbing my ankles. Their were two other guys in the room and their was no reathing. I was frozen in place, the ship
started to level out, then we all started to breath. The ship then took an up angle, then we started to talk, it was
then that I realized that I still held the case of bread. We shot a red flair and surfaced. Later we herd that we needed to
go under the Carrier and that was why we did the angles and dangles. We found out the Destroyer was dragging a 6 ton sonar
dome at 100 feet. It put a 4 foot rip in one of our fuel tanks and the sail was ripped out between the ABT and #1 scope.
The only consolation was the dome and probably the Destroyer CO's fitness report went to the bottom. The sea was pretty ruff
on the trip home and the OD needed to be tied on the bridge and no lookouts were topside.
2. Flooding of engine air induction:
I was oiler for Grubby Dave in the fwd engine room. On a routine
dive a 1 inch drain valve on one of the engine air induction valves (able, baker, charlie valve?) carried away flooding the
engine air ventilation. I was looking at the vent ducting (which was hard welded to the hull) and it looked like it was shaking
a foot or more in every direction and a loud rumbling noise was heard. Then the flooding started, it's hard to believe so
much water could come in the boat through a 1 inch hole (I think we were at 100 foot depth). Two four inch solid streams dumping
onto the upper deck and we could here water dumping outboard. It took Grubby and I standing on the ceiling to close the engine
air induction valve. By the time we got the valve shut water was just over the lower compartment deck plates. We didn't have
time to worry about anything but that valve.
3. Cuban crises: After our trip to Australia I was made fuel king. The boat was in upkeep with all our engine exhaust
valves disassembled. On the night of Kennedy's TV broadcast I was in San Diego enjoying some local night life, I didn't here
any of his speech. On the way back to the base I noticed all the lights were on and a lot of people were scurrying around.
When I got on board the duty chief asked were I was because he had been calling all over San Diego trying to locate me. He
told me to call the fuel pier and arrange for fuel and lube oil as we were to get under way ASAP. Well their was plenty of
fuel available but they had no bulk lube oil, all that was available was 5 gallon containers, well it took about 10 seconds
to say give me the oil.
They delivered many pallets of 5 gal cans to the boat they were stacked fwd and aft of the
sail. I stayed up all night popping cans and poring lube oil into the tank. What a sight, I had a ring side seat as I was
topside at the after room hatch, all night long their was a line of ships about 50 feet apart leaving San Diego harbor, it
must have been every ship in the harbor. The next day we left the harbor and floated around close to San Diego for two weeks
waiting for the all clear. We all anticipated war, I'm glad it didn't happen.
-Al Praeger
