The Navy Years

Well, here's where it all started.
Boot Camp at Great Lakes

Here's my Electrician's Mate 'A' School class picture. Yup. I'm in there somewhere.

Now I get my first ship at sea. The USS Claude Rickettes DDG-5. Really not bad for a first ship. I took a mediteranean cruise on this ship. I saw several interesting ports of call in France, Spain, Italy and Greece. I also qualified as shipboard electrician and operator of the electric plant.

Now here is where the fun starts. Off to the toughest training program I've ever been through. This one really challenged me, but I survived.

Nuclear Power Training
(USN Style)

This was my class at Nuc School. Class was held at Bainbridge Naval Station in Maryland. We where pretty much isolated from EVERYONE else. The idea was to limit the distractions to our studies. Even with that, some of us fell behind and had our hours corrected to allow for more study. My wife only lived 30 miles away, but I don't remember seeing her much during this time. We sure were glad when this was over. This is only 1 of 8 groups in the whole class. I think we started with 512 students and after 6 months we were down to around 200 survivors.

After this 6 month classroom portion of out training we were sent off to operating prototype power plants for the 6 month hands-on portion of our training. By the time this 6 months ended, the 95 of us that were left felt real good about our studies. We figured we had it made, but little did we know that the training left for us on-board the ships we were sent to was just as tough as what we had been through already. Only difference was that we knew the theory behind what was expected of us in the fleet.

I only thought I was going to see a ship now. But the truth was that I had to attend yet another school. Submarine Training. This gave us the more practical end of how to survive on board submarines. We studied submarine construction, safety, accidents, and (My favorite) how to leave a submarged submarine in case of a problem. This training took place in New London, Ct.

Finally, A submarine. I went to the USS George Bancroft SSBN(643)Gold in November of 1968. What a boat! For the next year I worked at my submarine and engineering qualifications.

Then one day, after lots of work, I was presented my Silver Dolphins. Finally "Qualified in Submarines." My Commanding Officer presented the Silver Dolphins to me at a ceremony onboard. The next port we entered, the crew presented me my dolphins in the traditional way (at that time). The tradition was to drop the dolphins into a pitcher, add a shot of everything on the bar and top off with beer. Then you were expected to drink until you caught your dolphins between your teeth. I'll tell you, that was one NASTY drink.
I was able to settle down into shipboard life. I continued my training and took boxes of correspondence courses. We, the qualified, were also expected tomake sure that the new people got qualified too. After 8 FBM patrols and one ship overhaul period I was finally ready to leave Bancroft (Gomer B as we called her). I did leave in style though. I took a good advancement:

Well, here I am as a BRAND NEW Warrant Officer W-1. I had entered the realm of "no one knows what to do with you". I thought I was going to some shore duty by now. After all, I had been on sea duty for about 8 years now. But, the NEW WARRANT hand NO sea time to his name and had to take several sea duty tours.
 
 

Back

Next

Home

View Guestbook
Sign Guestbook

E-Mail