Tales From The Travels

The Sunday portion of our training last weekend was devoted to damage control (DC) training. DC is exactly what it sounds like, controlling damage. Since we’re talking about warships, most damage involves holes in the ship somewhere and water getting in. Consequently, some of the major portions of it consist of patching holes in the hull or deck, bracing busted hatches, and stopping leaks from pipelines. This is stuff that can make the difference in whether a ship survives or sinks.

In 1987, the USS Stark was hit with two Exocet cruise missiles fired by an Iraqi aircraft. The missiles impacted, but didn’t explode. Instead, they blew big holes from their impact and continued to burn, setting the spaces on fire. 37 men died, but the ship survived, thanks to heroic DC and firefighting efforts on the part of its crew.

In 1975, the USS Belknap collided with the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy, killing six men on the Belknap and one on the Kennedy. The Belknap collided with the overhanging flight deck of the Kennedy which ripped its superstructure off, rupturing seams throughout the ship and starting extensive fires. The crew had to fight all night to keep the ship afloat.

In 1969, the Australian aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne collided with the USS Frank E. Evans and cut the American ship in two, resulting in the deaths of 79 crewmen. The front section sank within minutes, but the aft end stayed afloat due to having its watertight doors secured. The survivors were evacuated to the Melbourne and the wreckage was cut loose.

In comparison, the British lost the HMS Sheffield in the Falklands War of 1982. The ship was hit by a single Exocet missile fired by an Argentine aircraft. 20 crewmen died in the attack. Like in the USS Stark, the missile did not detonate, but continued to burn, setting the ship on fire. This class of British ship did not emphasize the importance of fire fighting and damage control and the crew was unable to save the ship. They abandoned ship after several hours, but the ship continued to float and burn for another six days before sinking.

It is easy to see why we place so much emphasis on training for firefighting and damage control. It’s important that every member of the crew knows how to perform these functions, not just the primary teams. While the this training is extensive and done wherever the ship happens to be, the big validation is Refresher Training (REFTRA), which is an intensive evaluation all ships must successfully complete before going on extended deployments. Until recent years, REFTRA on the east coast was done at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba is a base we have on the southeast coast of Cuba. We signed a lease with the government of Cuba in the 19th century and have kept it since then. We have diligently paid the rent to Castro, but he reportedly never cashes the checks. Instead, he uses it as a rallying point for his anti-American Imperialism tirades. It’s ringed with barbed wire and minefields and guarded by a large contingent of Marines, but is actually very peaceful and people stationed there take their families for their tour of duty. There are schools and the Navy makes a concerted effort to provide as much recreation as it can. Today, of course, it’s famous as the place we take terrorists for detainment until we figure out what to do with them.

I made two trips to GTMO (or Gitmo), as it’s affectionately called. GTMO was a very peaceful place and, since we went during the winter both times, it was a nice, tropical break when we could use it most. The scuba diving there was excellent and you could just walk in from the beach. I did several dives there and since it wasn’t open to the tourists, it was still a pristine environment. Some of the most beautiful diving I’ve ever done.

There were also things to do on base. Since everyone was essentially confined to base, the Navy did what it could to keep moral up. I never had a problem finding something to do there. Among things you could do was fish. I’m not much of a fisherman, but I enjoy watching others. I was up on the hill one day with some others and we could actually see a school of fish making its way into the bay. By the time we got down to the ship there were guys on the pier hauling in tunas. They weren’t even using bait! They just cast their hooks in and then hauled them out, almost as fast as they could cast. The pier was covered with tunas flopping around. They also had this outdoor theater that showed free movies after it got dark enough. The seats were bleachers and there was no air conditioning, but it was pretty comfortable after the sun set. One benefit was that you could eat and drink just about anything at this theater. I would get some popcorn and a beer and enjoy myself.

I also enjoyed the work, although the hours were long and hard. We were perfecting our skills and this was something I found rewarding. The REFTRA people would come on and we would get underway for the training area just outside the entrance to the bay. The evaluation team would then inform us of the simulated crisis situation we were in. They would walk into a compartment and announce that an enemy round had struck the compartment. Everyone there was either dead or dying. The ship’s crew would then have to react. Fires would have to be put out, injured people treated, and disrupted services would have to be restored. All of this while normal operations continue throughout the ship, just as if we had actually been in battle.

Part of the evaluation procedures involved the evaluators walking around and randomly picking crewmembers to ask them questions about things we were all supposed to be trained in. I was walking down the passageway during one of these periods when I was stopped and questioned about the DC and firefighting equipment. I was on the firefighting team and was fascinated with the DC gear. I would ask questions and get extra training on everything on the ship. Since this was a duty of everyone on board, I had plenty of opportunities. If the REFTRA guys were looking for someone that knew the equipment, they hit the jackpot when they picked me. I started telling this guy all about everything, pointing out all the different safety measures and the various backups. I talked about how this system or piece of equipment was used in this situation, but if the situation was different, then you would want to use this stuff over here. I was really on a role! I didn’t even wait for them to ask me about something, I just jumped right in and started training them on it! Pretty soon, I could tell he was trying to get away, but I didn’t let him go until I was done. I can imagine he went back and told the other evaluators, no matter what, don’t ask that guy any questions!

During one of the general quarters drills (GQ) I was assigned to take radar fixes of our location. This is when you use the radar to take a range to several points to determine your location by triangulation. We were just off the coast of communist Cuba and maneuvering wildly to the imaginary battle, so it was important to maintain a constant vigil on our location. I was getting very accurate fixes when I plotted us in Cuban waters. All of our maneuvering had resulted in us leaving the international waters and going into Cuban territorial waters! Not good! I looked at my results and went, ‘Holy shit! We’re in Cuban waters!’ I thought I was talking to myself and was turning to inform the watch officer when I found out the captain was actually standing right behind me and had hear me. He said, ‘Where?’ I pointed to my fix on the chart and said, ‘Right there!’ He looked at were I was pointing on the chart and went, ‘Holy shit! We’re in Cuban waters!’ He dashed up to the bridge and shortly after that the ship healed over as it made a hard turn and a beeline back to international waters. We were concerned for several days that the Cubans would make an incident out of it. There were some Soviet ships making a port visit down the coast and we waited to see if they would come up and harass us, but nothing ever came of it.

I really studied my damage control back then, but I never had the experience of being in a wet trainer until this last weekend. A wet trainer is exactly that, a simulated ship that they flood with water. You and the other students have the job of patching, shoring and dewatering to save the ship. No one ever does. The instructors can flood the water in faster than the students can take it out.

The first drill I was on deck with the dewatering team, so I didn’t drown. I just got to watch the ship sink. The second drill put me inside. It was pretty bad. We couldn’t even find the hole we were supposed to patch and then some of the equipment was missing. But, we persevered and finally patched the hole, even though we were in about eight feet of water at the time. We died, but it was a glorious death.

Hopefully, it’s not a skill I’ll ever need to use. But, I feel confident I can contribute if I ever do.

I spent this weekend doing shipboard firefighting and damage control training while in Newport. Saturday was devoted to the firefighting portion and things have really changed since I first took this training 30 years ago. They are now so concerned with safety that there was hardly any time for the training. They actually lined us up in single file at one point and used a radio to get permission to take us across the hallway. I hope any fire I ever find myself in is as safe as the trainer.

I took shipboard firefighting courses when I was in boot camp and on the USS Comte de Grasse. We wore the clothes we normally wore on the ship and, after getting extensive training, we were given hoses and told to go into this big building and put the fire out. The bottom of the trainer was filled with diesel fuel which they would set on fire and let get good and hot before letting us go in. There were only two ways to put that fire out – let it burn out or go in and put it out. I was near the front to the hose line on at least one occasion and remember how they opened the door and we were facing a roaring monster of flames. But, we were well trained and knew what to do. One team would hold an applicator up in the air and disperse a fog of water spray that would provide protection for everyone. The other team, protected from the heat by the water spray, would work its way forward, sweeping the hose back and forth to put the fire out, something we would continue doing until we accomplished our task. Of course, we would be soaked through and would stink like a diesel fire, but we felt good about our training.

The training we received on Saturday was certainly a light version of this. We spent only a few hours in the classroom, talking about safety procedures as much as firefighting technique, before we suited up. They gave us these thick protective suits with gloves, flash hoods, helmets, and boots. Then, we put on a self-contained breathing apparatus with an air tank and a facemask. We were completely encased in battle gear by the time we had all of this on. You don’t want to do this if you object to sweating, but it was definitely protective and I felt like I could charge into a burning room in that gear without fear of injury. The problem is that the ship would have burned to the water line in the time it took us to put all of this gear on.

Once we were suited up we went into the burning rooms and extinguished the fires. This time, though, they were strictly controlled by the instructors and were not roaring. It was interesting, but I didn’t come away with any level of confidence in those of my classmates that had never been shipboard. I heard similar comments from some of the other people that had spent time on ships. I don’t know if they just watered it down for us reservists, or the course is simply watered down. Either way, it was not adequate.

In August of 1979, while on the USS Comte de Grasse, a group of us were getting ready to go on liberty. The ship had been in the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, VA for several months and we were now pier side at the Navy base in Norfolk. We were just about to leave when the lights momentarily went out and came back on. We all stopped in our tracks to see what happened next. Within a few seconds the power went out again and this time it didn’t come back. Then, we heard possibly the worst words you can hear on a ship.

“Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire in Engineroom #1!”

Everyone immediately evacuated their spaces. The duty firefighting team went to work and the rest of us mustered in the appropriate places. The duty section not on the firefighting team and anyone else in uniform mustered so they could assist in the fight. Those not in uniform, like us, mustered on the flight deck, basically to get out of the way. Not only is civilian clothing usually not flame resistant, but it frequently will actually catch on fire. Having flaming clothing bonding to your flesh is not something most of us would like to experience. If the announcement had come two minutes later we would have been off the ship. If it had come a couple minutes earlier we would have been in uniform and able to contribute. As it is, we mostly stood on the flight deck and watched what we could. This was a major fire and we got assistance from the base and other ships. A tug boat pulled alongside and hosed down the hull where the heat was causing it to buckle. Even pier side, we were at risk of losing the ship.

Water is normally not much of a problem on a warship, they’re built to withstand a great deal of damage and to continue fighting. They are filled with voids that do nothing but provide buoyancy to the ship and compartments are separated by watertight bulkheads and hatches. Ships are equipped with an extensive amount of equipment to fight flooding and crews are well trained in how to deal with it. Flooding is something that can be contain and dealt with.

Fires, though, are monsters. I don’t think there is a single thing that receives more training than the situation of fighting a shipboard fire. The problem with fires is that they can spread by so many methods. A fire can ignite fuels across the room and can even ignite fuels it doesn’t come in contact with. And, warships are floating bombs filled with fuels and munitions, all of which doesn’t mix well with fires. The USS Maine exploded and sank in Havana harbor in 1898, leading to the Spanish-American War. The Spanish were blamed at the time, but I have seen some excellent research work showing that the cause of the blast was a fire in one of the coal bins that ignited munitions in a neighboring compartment.

Fires are also deadlier than water. You can wade into water, you can’t wade into a fire. And, when you’re out at sea there’s nowhere to run. You have to stand and fight. As it turned out, even in port you stand and fight.

It took a several hours, but the firefighting team finally got it under control and we were able to secure from general quarters. I was able to make a contribution during all of this by ferrying equipment up and down the ladders (stairs). This was away from the fire, so I wasn’t at risk of becoming a human torch, but I was also freeing someone else up from having to do this labor.

When it was all done the ship reeked of the smell of the fire. Smoke had gotten into just about every space on the ship that wasn’t sealed tight. The captain, Frank Lugo, arranged tours so all of us could see the damage done in the engine room. It was a total loss and everything in it was barely recognizable. I remember this one piece of equipment. It was too large to load it in the ship in one piece, so they had brought it in in several pieces and brazed them together inside the engine room. The brazing had all melted and left the individual pieces just sitting there. A good shove and it would have fallen apart.

What had happened is that the exhaust cowling on the gas turbine engines had ruptured and the white hot exhaust gases were venting into the engine room, which wasn’t normally manned while we were in port, so it had vented for quite some time. The fire watch had been on his rounds and had stopped to check the engine room. Before opening the hatch he had looked through the small porthole and couldn’t see anything, not even a dark void. He checked the door for heat and found it was burning hot and had sounded the alarm.

We received orders to return to Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, MS where the ship had been constructed. The shipyard workers were pier side waiting for us as we approached the pier and some were lowered onboard by crane so they could get right to work. They cut the entire engine room out of the ship and just pulled it out. Then, they took a new one and slipped it right into place. The whole thing took about a month and then we were as good as new.