April 12th ****

31 years ago today, I went to Navy Boot Camp in San Diego, California, on the "Buddy Program" with a high school friend of mine. I was 20 years old, and living in the YMCA in Pasadena, California. Life was looking good, looking forward, but looking back, I was "escaping" the Y and the life I had then. I was living on $80 a week, minus what I needed to save for the rent at the Y, $130.00 a month. It was cheap, and I was not "homeless", exactly, but I believed that there were better things ahead of me.

"Woulda, shoulda, coulda".

When I joined the Navy in late 1981, I took a series of tests, the Armed Forces Vocational Aptitude Battery, which showed that my number one aptitude, my best way to go in the Navy, was to become a Hospital Corpsman. That would have meant that I wouldn’t be going to the Navy’s Boot Camp for 8 weeks, no, I would have gone to the 14 week US Marine Boot Camp – the US Marines are part of the US Navy, and I would have become a Marine in all but my title.

"Noooo, I don’t think so!" I said and thought, but now, well, Woulda, Coulda Shoulda. I would always have a job somewhere, in Health Care, as a nurse or a nurse practitioner.. "Shoulda done it", looking back 31 years – my life would have been COMPLETELY different now.

The next aptitude, they said, was to become a Nuclear Engineer on submarines, or perhaps on a surface ship of some kind. All the Navy’s nuclear ships now are aircraft carriers, very large vessels, but in the early 80’s, there were nuclear cruisers too. The sub force was being built up rapidly; Ronald Reagan was President then and had embarked on a massive build-up of US military strength, and submarines were being built on both coasts. That might have been interesting; subs were the Navy’s spies then (still are, really), but I thought, "no way". Nuclear Engineering had two big strikes against it: one of course, being Nuclear Engineering. I was wicked smart, they thought, but I was smart enough to say "no" to any nuclear exposure at all; and two, go on a ship that’s Designed To Sink??? What, are you fucking crazy!? NO WAY.

As part of the arms build up, a lot of ships were being built, ships using the newest form of ship’s propulsion, the gas turbine – basically a jet engine turning a reduction gear that turned a propeller. 52 Perry Class frigates were being built, escort ships for the convoys of WW3. A couple dozen Spruance Class destroyers were being built, and that hull was being used as the basis of Ticonderoga Class cruisers, both types having four gas turbine for main propulsion and 4 more for electrical production. The frigates had two gas turbines for main propulsion, but they had 4 diesel engines turning the generators, a "Combined Diesel and Gas" system. The engineering plants were different enough so that there were 2 "pipelines" for training engineers to run these ships; one was for Frigates and the other was for Cruisers, Destroyers, and Patrol Hydrofoils. I picked the Frigate training; there were 52 ships slated to be built, and they were stationed on both coasts and overseas. The Cruiser/Destroyer pipeline sounded good, particularly for the Patrol Hydrofoils – 45 miles an hour on the water? Yahooo!

But, there were only 6 hydrofoils, all built and manned already, and they told me my chances of getting one of those ships, all stationed in Key West. Florida, was doubtful. I had read all kids of stories about escort ships like the frigates – destroyer escorts in another age, and thought, ok, those were all adventure stories, and that’s what I want – an adventure!

I went through the initial training and scored highly enough to advance in rank – I was then a Third Class Petty Officer, an E-4, with less than a year’s service already, fast tracking my way into the Navy. I was eventually assigned to a brand new ship, not even completely built yet, in Bath Iron Works Maine, and I became a "Plank Owner", a member of the first crew of the FFG-42, the USS Klakring, named for a submarine hero in WW2. A BRAND NEW ship. We commissioned that ship, accepted it into the Navy, on 20 August 1983, almost 30 years ago.

It turned out that those frigates were pretty tough ships – I looked around mine. as one of the engineers, and thought, "I’m gonna die on this ship if WW3 goes down", but I was wrong about the strength of those ships: two of them suffered "battle" damage and did not sink. One had two Iraqi Exocet anti-ship missiles strike it, killing more than 2 dozen sailors, but the ship did not sink and was rebuilt and went on to serve for decades. The other frigate damaged hit a mine in the Persian Gulf, escorting tankers through the Gulf waters then, and it did not sink either, although heavily damaged.

I was aboard my ship for about a year and a half, before and after it’s commissioning, but I got out of the Navy towards the end of 1984 because my wife got sick and we applied for a "Hardship Discharge". The Klakring went on to serve 28 more years, retiring last month from the US Navy, that class of Frigates serving more than twice as long as any other class of Frigates or Destroyer Escorts in the 20th century. They were part of the "High/Low" blend of ships being built then, cheap, mass produced escorts for convoys. The Navy decided after the end of The Cold War that they had no place for Frigates any more – too small and little room to upgrade or update the ships, and now the only ships the Navy is building are hugely expensive, compared to the Perry Class Frigates.

FFG-42 served in the US Navy for over 29 years, retiring last month, and being sold, I hear, to The Ukraine, a massive irony, because when the Klakring was designed, laid down and built, The Ukraine was part of the USSR, The Soviet Union, the "enemy".

World War Three of course never happened, and the Klakring never acted as a convoy escort to fleets taking supplies to Europe, but the Frigates served well and long, and leave the US Navy with a distinguished service record. I’m proud have have "done my part" in The Cold War, and the only time I ever saw Soviet ships was when we went to Cuba for training – the infamous "Russian Trawlers", spy ships, and once more, when the Soviet cruise liner Maksim Gorky docked in The Bahamas at the same time we did.

29 -31 years ago. Good memories, all together.

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