In The Navy (On the Boat), Part 25

I think all the rocking and rolling we did on the way into Scotland resulted in a Periscope problem. The “torque assist” was burned out, so you had to pull the heavy assed scope around manually. The Nav ETs figured out it was a blown transformer. It was just a little thing, the size you might see in a mid sized transistor radio. No big deal right? The problem was; we had no replacement part on board.

The ETs didn’t know what to do, but one of the Nuke ETs got word about the problem, and took the faulty transformer back aft. He was able to rebuild the transformer, but because we didn’t have the exact same sized wire to rebuild it, he had to count the turns as he unwound the old wire, and recalculate the turns to put on the transformer with the ever slightly heavier gauge wire. Amazingly, it worked. Before we left Scotland, we had a functioning Periscope (this thing was a beast to turn without the torque assist).

I think the Nuke ETs name was Gilbert? and he wound up winning an individual award for fixing the Periscope. He was a strange guy. He had a long gray beard and wild eyes, sunken behind his tiny wired rimmed glasses. He wore painted chicken bones on a string that hung loosely around his neck, very Haitian Voodoo like stuff. He liked to shake the bones at people who pissed him off.

The trip back home started off quiet, then we got word that we had to do something “on the way” and headed north. We were again “extended”. After a while and some more “intel”, we headed south. We would sprint for a while, then come to a stop and circle, listening. It was pretty obvious we were looking for another Boat and it was probably transiting south out of the Norwegian or North Sea.

We kept up this cycle of sprint, stop and listen for a few days. We were off the coast of northern Spain when we went into one of the stop and listen cycles. I was almost off watch and was sweeping my area, joking with Bart.

It came out of our baffles; the area behind the Boat that you can’t listen to with the Sonar…because that listening stuff is all up forward and the propellers make too much noise back there anyway.

Another Boat was going active with its Sonar dead astern. The Sonar guys identified the type of Boat based on the frequency of the active sonar. The Control room went a bit crazy and just then Dyke walked in to take the watch. He asked me “What’s up?”

I told him “It’s 3.5 kilohertz active in the baffles.”, laughing.

The Russian we had been looking for had found us first. The Russians were nuts back then, they didn’t care if they gave away their position, and they would go active to just shock the American or Brit Boats when they stumbled onto them. It worked, we panicked.

The Captain appeared on the Con in seconds. He relieved the OOD and took over. He told the Dive to come to course 270, ahead full, do not cavitate.”, which means run away quietly. I should explain our Captain had commands on Boomer Boats before our Boat and was used to just “evading”. Pussy.

I think any real bad ass Attack Boat Captain would have turned around and gone active right back. Instead we ran away like a dog with its tail between it’s legs. The Cap lost a lot of respect with the crew after this. Honestly, he did what he was trained to do. I guess we all did.

After a while we turned to an intercept course and actually caught up to the Russian Boat. We trailed him into the Straights of Gibraltar, where we broke contact. Thank god. We were getting low on food again. This tracking party was not in the plans.

We had gone from such cold water to such warm water; all of the equipment on the Boat was starting to overheat. We had to kill half of the Fire Control System and the other half had the doors open to try to air cool them. Other electronic systems were in the same condition and the reactor was even running at a reduced capacity because it was too hot.

One other "off the wall" thing of note about the trip back home was the Torpedoman Donnie creating a piece of art. One by one people were being relieved of watch and lead down to the forward berthing Head (bathroom) to take in a viewing of Donnie’s enormous crap. Totally out of the blue.

It was gigantic and wrapped around like a Chocolate soft ice cream dish, spiraling upward to a perfect tip.
It’s a strange thing to be proud of, but Donnie was. At the least, it was a spectacle that we would never see again. Sick, I know…

A few more incidents during the trip back will follow…