The best shots IV

I was on a new ship, and part of being new was that we were trained in all sorts of things so that the proper responses would be unthinking and automatic.  We Engineers drilled in all sorts of engineering emergencies and fires, flooding, and damage control.  That practise came in handy on a couple of Frigates. 

Looking around at the ship, I thought we’d be toast if anything ever happened.  It was The Cold War, and in the early 80’s, there was still the perceived possibiltiy that war would happen with the USSR.  One Frigate was patroling in the Persian Gulf in the late 80’s and hit a mine; it did not sink, and was towed into Bahrain and eventually brought home on a big floating dry dock and was rebuilt and put back into service.  Another Frigate was hit by Iraqi Exocet missles "by mistake" at about the same time, and it too did not sink, though one of the missles hit in the bearthing areas and dozens were killed or injured.  An engineer was credited with saving his shipmates because he knew what to do and did it, helping his companions to safety.  The ship caught fire and burned furiously, but the crew saved their ship and it too was rebuilt and put back into service.  These ships were made of aluminum from the main deck up, and aluminum burns if ignited and is very diffult to extinguish.  Both crews knew what to do and saved their ships.

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All sections of the ship exercised their duties, and one day, the Engineers were invited to watch the Gunner’s Mates perform.  Our ship’s main gun was a 76mm dual purpose (surface and anti-aircraft).  It was automated – no crew served in the gun mount, it being controled by computers and loaded automatically.  It was capable of firing up to 70 rounds a minute, and firing it sounded to me like somone hitting the side of the ship with a huge sledgehammer.  It had a range of about nine miles; we watched from the flight deck as the gun fired at targets we couldn’t see, raising huge spouts of water we could see on the horizon.  Back there on the flight deck, we got to watch the missle launcher at work; missles looked like  huge bottle rockets flying off the front end of the ship and they made a hell of a ripping sound as the missles accelerated to many times the speed of sound, the missles soaring off into the sky above us.

I didn’t get an pictures of those events, but I did get some shots of the torpedo tubes being fired:

We Engineers got a ring side seat above the tubes.  Here are some of my fellow Engineers on the second deck , looking down at the torpedo tubes below:

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We saw the Torpedomen load and service the tubes below.

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The tubes were trained outboard and an alarm rang to signal firing.  That alarm went on soo long that I got tired of holding my camera to my eye and dropped it to my chest (on it’s lanyard)… and they fired the torpedo:

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This was one of my best shots ever.  I had taken my camera from my face and they fired the torpedo and I cought it almost perfectly from my chest level!

Huzzah!

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