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Man, those Gearing FRAM boats, built in 1944-45 and updated in the 1960s, weren’t exactly long on creature comforts. Pretty wet rides as well.
Man, those Gearing FRAM boats, built in 1944-45 and updated in the 1960s, weren’t exactly long on creature comforts. Pretty wet rides as well.
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Oh, the memories. Third class NROTC Midshipman training cruise – 5 weeks on the USS Joseph P. Kennedy, DD-850! Was transferred to the Kennedy from a fleet oiler, via the bosun’s chair. In those few weeks we went from the North Atlantic to the Baltic and down to the Med. Many tales, most of them true!
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Dad’s last cruise was on USS Roosevelt (CVA-42) in 1970. And as part of her escort was the Joseph P. Kennedy. Which, she’s still tied up at Battleship Cove in Fall River, MA.
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This film brought back a lot of memories. A lot of the film was things I never saw, like the shots inside the gun mount, and the refueling, because I spent my destroyer time in either the forward or after enginerooms.
I think Main Control’s throttleboard made it one shot for a second.
Thanks for the post.
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I’d always had a lot of respect for the old tin can sailors, of course, and I was a destroyer sailor myself in the AEGIS era. But I never really got it, never fully understood until I worked for a company that operated and maintained power plants, many years after I got out.
Not a day went by that we didn’t fight a fire somewhere in the plant. Not a day went by without having to do some workaround to keep the turbine spinning. Not a day went by where someone didn’t get burned by a steam leak. Walking around at night, I really did wind up carrying a broomstick with me if I was up on the boiler in the dark.
We had all this shit going wrong around us, all these problems with the plant, and we were a very small plant. We only produced 12-14 MW, and we were spread out: a 12-acre site, with plenty of space to walk around everything and get at things. We didn’t have a ridiculous mamount of power crammed into a tiny steel box that rocks and rolls and gets shot at.
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Rub your balls with graphite!
I have no idea why a Machinist Mate, who learned this phrase in boot camp in 1967, should still remember it and know what it means.
Red Yellow blue white Green, for the spacing boards during underway refueling and rearming.
I served on the USS Great Sitkin and we spent a lot of time along side DDs, probably including the Gearing at some point, rearming. Also alongside oilers refueling. That video brought it all back.
I’ve known a number of can sailors and without exception they all thought destroyer duty was the best there was.
Thanks for sharing
John Henry
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