Navy Nuclear Weapons
Welcome to the Navy Nuclear Weapons Association Guest Book
Hello "Chief O'Neal"
Served with you as Pre-comm crew aboard the America CVA-66. Worked as LPO for GMT1 George James in the aft magazines. Your office was right outside the mag doors. LT B.P. Brown was our Div Officer and CDR Gunn was Weps Officer. Skipper was CAPT Heyworth, XO CDR Austen .
Some of the other crew were: Jerry Baldwin, Frank Bianco, CWO Berry, E-9 Martz .
As with all Pre-comm duty, it was arduous and quite dangerous. Notable incidents you may remember: Sitting anchored at Gitmo and getting hit by a damned fruit boat. (Caused serious misalignment to our aft Terrier missile rails.) Going through a violent hurricane on our maiden trip to relieve the FDR, and the hull being lifted out of the water and frying the journals (Couple weeks in the yards at Genoa to fix that. .) Escort destroyer boilers taking green water through the stacks and blowing up a boiler (Killed several and burned many more with live steam. ) Had an A4(?) come up through the belly of an A3J killing 5 or 6.
Had an "Angel" try to lift off the flight deck with a tiedown attached and it rotor-walked off the deck into the Bosphorous Strait where we were anchored in Istanbul. All the aircrew survived.
I still have shin-scars (and hearing loss) from working night-ops up on the flight deck as a Tech Monitor and loading crew member. What with suicides, and pilots diving into the Med, we probably lost 12 or 13 people on our maiden voyage. And--to top it all off-the Rosie dumped oil all over Spain, and of course the entire continent was pissed at the Navy. Being named the America didn't help any either.
There was a demonstration in Taksim Square in Istanbul and they chased the entire Shore Patrol detachment (including me and a LCDR in charge) across the Square where we finally made it into a hotel lobby just as the Turkish mIlitary showed up and opened up with machine guns into a crowd of perhaps 500 people. I saw several (9-10) hit.
As a young E4 this was all high adventure and made great sea story material for the future. Hell, by the time we pulled into Cannes, OTHER things were on our minds. Such as the W-Div party at the Carleton Hotel in Golfe Juan. Things settled down a little after that-and the cruise kind of finished up fairly normal.
I do remember you and Ensign Kegler being assigned to the aft spaces.
Nice to hear from you.
Larry W. Walls GMTC, Ret 1961-1981
Served with you as Pre-comm crew aboard the America CVA-66. Worked as LPO for GMT1 George James in the aft magazines. Your office was right outside the mag doors. LT B.P. Brown was our Div Officer and CDR Gunn was Weps Officer. Skipper was CAPT Heyworth, XO CDR Austen .
Some of the other crew were: Jerry Baldwin, Frank Bianco, CWO Berry, E-9 Martz .
As with all Pre-comm duty, it was arduous and quite dangerous. Notable incidents you may remember: Sitting anchored at Gitmo and getting hit by a damned fruit boat. (Caused serious misalignment to our aft Terrier missile rails.) Going through a violent hurricane on our maiden trip to relieve the FDR, and the hull being lifted out of the water and frying the journals (Couple weeks in the yards at Genoa to fix that. .) Escort destroyer boilers taking green water through the stacks and blowing up a boiler (Killed several and burned many more with live steam. ) Had an A4(?) come up through the belly of an A3J killing 5 or 6.
Had an "Angel" try to lift off the flight deck with a tiedown attached and it rotor-walked off the deck into the Bosphorous Strait where we were anchored in Istanbul. All the aircrew survived.
I still have shin-scars (and hearing loss) from working night-ops up on the flight deck as a Tech Monitor and loading crew member. What with suicides, and pilots diving into the Med, we probably lost 12 or 13 people on our maiden voyage. And--to top it all off-the Rosie dumped oil all over Spain, and of course the entire continent was pissed at the Navy. Being named the America didn't help any either.
There was a demonstration in Taksim Square in Istanbul and they chased the entire Shore Patrol detachment (including me and a LCDR in charge) across the Square where we finally made it into a hotel lobby just as the Turkish mIlitary showed up and opened up with machine guns into a crowd of perhaps 500 people. I saw several (9-10) hit.
As a young E4 this was all high adventure and made great sea story material for the future. Hell, by the time we pulled into Cannes, OTHER things were on our minds. Such as the W-Div party at the Carleton Hotel in Golfe Juan. Things settled down a little after that-and the cruise kind of finished up fairly normal.
I do remember you and Ensign Kegler being assigned to the aft spaces.
Nice to hear from you.
Larry W. Walls GMTC, Ret 1961-1981