Odd Sightings at Sea

[Griff Murphey]

I think one of the most puzzling things I ever saw was an office building sticking out of the South China Sea off of Phan Rhang, Vietnam. It was the bridge of the nuclear guided missile cruiser USS LONG BEACH, hull down just over the horizon, covering us on the Vietnam evacuation. As there were lots of aircraft buzzing around, it was reassuring to know it was there, as I had read it had knocked down Migs at 60 miles.

The most interesting ships I saw were when we were sailing into Singapore in 1975. There were lots of very old 1930's "three island" tramp steamers with straight bows and stacks, incredible, beautiful old ships. I also remember the ship graveyard in Hong Kong at the time, which also had some real classics awaiting scrapping, including at least one old liner with a clipper bow.

Three WW2 ships still in operation at Subic were USS HANCOCK, possibly the last WW2 ESSEX still operating as an
attack carrier, OKLAHOMA CITY, 7th fleet flagship, and USS PRAIRIE, AD-14. When the Vietnamese Navy sailed in, seeking internment after the fall of the Republic, we got to see plenty of WW2 BARNEGAT class seaplane tenders (ex-USCG WHECs), minesweepers like the Lindberg ADMIRABLE class kit, and LSTs.
Fb
I saw at least one of the old GEARING class DDs. Those things (all destroyers, really!) amazed me taking so much green water over the bow while our 600 foot LPH (helo carrier) was barely rocking. I was glad destroyers did not carry dentists. Bet the patients were too... OOOOPS!

[jon_norstog]

Griff,

I was on the CGC Barataria at Pearl. We were tied up on tin can row, with two cans between us and the dock. One of them was, I kid you not, the Fletcher! The Old Original.

I had a bit of shore duty, Lifeboat Station Bodega Bay, after I was released from the burn ward at Ft. Sam Houston. One night, I was in the tower on the mid watch, a msg. came in on an emergency channel. "This is the USS Long Beach, request permission to enter Bodaga bay. Repeat ..." I couldn't believe it. here I was, EN3 and the Long Beach was asking my permission to come in?

So I told them, "Permission denied. This is crab season and you'll wipe out every crabber in Bodega Bay if you come in. Anchor out."

As it turned out, they wanted to offload a sailor whose mother had passed away. They anchored out and called us to pick him up. So I fired up the engines in the 44-footer and we drove out ... it was like coming up on the great wall of China! Nothing in sight but wall-to-wall ship. We came alongside and they dropped the guy over in a bosun chair. We took him in, called a cab and packed him off to SFO. And the Long Beach sailed off into the fog.

Must have been on the CGC Dexter, we were out on a training run outside SF. A 2-seat fighter had gone down that week and we were on the lookout for debris. We came on a life raft, so a boat was put down and the Bosun's Mates went out to check it out. The raft waas empty, except for being full of crabs. WTF!! Anyway, those Bosuns mates brought the raft and the crabs back. Then they had the cooks boil up the crabs and they ate them. The whole ship was talking about that for a week! Even the snipes were grossed out.

That's three.

jn

[jon_norstog]

PS: Griff, I served on two Barnegat-class ships. The first was CGC Dexter, formerly USS Biscayne. She was a 12th District cream puff, with 1/4" of paint on every surface and lots of polished brass. We did mostly reserve cruises, plus an occasional ocean Station November. Acupulco. Mazatlan. guaymas. EZ duty. Lots of time to paint. Lots of time to polish brass.

My second ship was the CGC Barataria, which was a ratted out rustbucket. She had done about 20 years of Ocean Station Bravo in the N. Atlantic before going to Vietnam and then transfer to the 12th District as a replacement (ha ha) for the Dexter. She just about took me and 180 other men to our graves the next year in the Unimak passage. But that's another story.

The AVPs were great ships. All that fuel capacity, they could cruise around the world almost if they kept it at 100 SRPM. They were much better-riding ships than the typical 'can. Deeper draft, beamier. Bigger berthing areas (for all those pilots and flight crew), more toilets in the head. What they call sea-keeping ability. You could tow a freighter with an AVP. It's almost as if they were designed to be Coast Guard Cutters.

They were designed to take a 68-degree roll before capsizing. I remember that day in the Gulf of Alaska, we were chasing down a Korean mother ship and her chillun that had been violating the fishing treaty. And a storm was rising. So we drove into it after them. I was off watch, on the mess deck. It was all anyone could do to hang on as the ship rolled. We were watching the clinometer. 55 degrees, cool! But the ship started rolling heavier - 62, 63 degrees. Then she took a roll to 65, and seemed to struggle to recover. Another 65, then a 66. Next roll went to 67 degrees ... the ship hung there instead of coming back. We all looked at each other .. s**t! This was March in the Gulf of Alaska, you can live maybe 10 minutes in the water.

Finally the ship came back up. And then you could tell by the sound we had changed course. The captain apparently decided to break off the chase.

We went back to Dutch Harbor the next day. We had captured the mother ship, and two of the 10 fishing boats came in. The rest were never heard fom again. The next day the captain of the mother ship was poisoned and the XO took over. A couple days later the XO was poisoned. Reeves Airlines took out both bodies. Then the company sent a man out from Seoul. The US Magistrate in Anchorage laid a huge fine on them, but they couldn't pay and in the end we gave them enough diesel fuel to get back to Korea.

I do tend to run on ...


jn

[Griff Murphey]

I had a neighbor who served on the BARNEGAT class AVP CASCO. He was a supply officer. CASCO survived a torpedo hit up in Alaska and through the rest of WW2, if they came up short with ANYTHING, it was written off as "Lost in the Torpedo!"

I advised them of his passing and began a long correspondence with CDR Jim Roohan who was, as a JG, the last XO when the ship was laid up. He told some cool stories. Example, the CASCO was mothering a Patrol Wing operating the big Coronado 4 engined flying boats. The CASCO skipper took a ride in one one day and it encountered a Betty. The pilot asked the CASCO's skipper for permission to attack, which was granted, and the Coronado shot down the Betty with its bow turret.

This correspondence lead me to attend their reunion in San Antonio in the mid 90's which lead me to the conclusion that one should never attend another ship's reunion which you never served on, but, actually, I enjoyed meeting the guys and it was good. Took my WW2 vet father-in-la gravel cruncher Army medic on Guadalcanal. I did a 1/1200 ship display. Did the same for the WW2 sub vets in Fort Worth in the same time. Cool watching those old guys squat down and study the silhouettes of those models!

[jon_norstog]

...... We went back to Dutch Harbor the next day. We had captured the mother ship, and two of the 10 fishing boats came in. The rest were never heard fom again. The next day the captain of the mother ship was poisoned and the XO took over. A couple days later the XO was poisoned. Reeves Airlines took out both bodies. Then the company sent a man out from Seoul. ......


jn


I forgot to mention, the man sent out from Seoul got poisoned too. Reeves kept pretty busy that week. Those koreans were something else! We took time out for a baseball game on the old base at Dutch Harbor ...

jn