MKSheppard wrote:oberon wrote:I got an angry inch, and angry inch!
Damn Shep. and here I thought you'd been in jail again.
heh, heh, heh......
Hey, that was funny huh? I was proud of that cheap shot, heh.
Seriously, Matt, I've been meaning to ask you this question ever since I
read "A Glimpse of Hell", the book on the explosion on the Iowa...
The book claims that the refits of the battleships in the 80s were rushed
by John Lehmann, who wanted to get them into service as fast as possible,
and led to 40 year old electrical wiring being retained, and in the book, they
had horror stories about how an electrical panel in the #4 turret of Iowa
would keep shorting out, making that turret useles...
It's interesting bec we had a shipwide failure that I personally will remain forever pissed off about, which I've dealt with in threads that say stuff abt how I fucking hate the Iowa. It's a personal grudge. I think that Capt. Moosally was sped toward a hasty retirement by the lack of general warship-awareness his stupid ship demonstrated. Not to take away from any of those guys, they suffered horribly, but the reason was the kind of command he ran. That piece of shit. Fuck him, but I don't know the details of who said what and why or when. But it's interesting that you mention this electrical failure, which is exactly what we speculated. They put in umpteen-hundred miles of new wiring to run the new missiles and electronics, and our shipwide failure was the E-diesels failing. So it's related. I don't know anymore to say abt that, or the book, and I wasn't on the Iowa, but goddamn they almost watched us die. Fuck em. Fuckers. Oh yeah, there is no turret #4, and their problem was with #2.
Really scary shit..
What was the condition of the Wisconscin when you were aboard her?
Barring that shit, the ship was in excellent condition. We may have been the tightest ship on the East Coast. We were certainly the tightest signals division. We were as well-trained and well-maintained as you can imagine. So double the fuck-yous to the Iowa. That shit with them winning the Christmas decoration contest every year, that was all politics as soon as we were on the scene.
So goddamn, I say again, fuck the Iowa, and if anyone on this board was on the Iowa, I can't decide if I want to say fuck you, or that I'm sorry for you for being under that dumb motherfucker Fred Moosally or however you spell his stupid-ass name. So a little of both. Assholes.
Now. Someone is gg to ask, what happened to make you so eternally bitter oberon? So here:
We had anchored out in Norfolk harbor, along with 61 who was about a mile away. The reason was a missile-x, since she was on her way out, decomm. We were to take on all her ammo. There were a zillion tugs and barges with cranes, and constant traffic back and forth as ammo was barged from her to us. At night, we secured the missile-x--it went on for days--and there was normal harbor traffic, maybe increased bec of us. There were a lot of tugs. So anyway. At 2 one morning, this guy, AG1 Thatcher, shakes me out of my rack and goes "Hyde Hyde! General quarters!" and since there was no power and this was going word-of-mouth, the fear factor is kicked up about 10 notches bec you don't know what's going on. Turns out, we had a major lube oil leak--maybe the number one catastrophe that can occur on a ship, there are others but this one happened to us so onward--on the one hot boiler we had going for power. So they shut it down. When this happens, the boiler normally sends a blast of air to the E-diesel to kick it on so you can have power, and more importantly, firemain pressure. Lube oil is just the name for fuel, and a leak means it's spraying onto a hot boiler, and a fire there generally means the ship is going to crack in half. If you can fight the fire, you stand a chance of merely being a hulk that is damaged beyond repair. If you can't, you can crack the keel and sink. Now, this is unpleasant. Factor in that this is November in Norfolk, and you have zero chance of survival. The Iowa sat and watched as we went totally dark, aircraft warning light and all, and bec they didn't have anyone actually watching the harbor irt SOP, they missed the giant black hulk on the horizon as it shut down any sign that would tell them things were normal. SO, we go up and use our battery lanterns to try to signal them, for TWO AND A HALF HOURS. We couldn't get a P-250 pump working, lord knows why, for that long, and just as we DO get one going, that's when they finally get woken up by the ONE tugboat that detected something awry, after we're flashing goddamn SOS out of desperation at any boat that moved. So they answer us, and in any other case, we would not swear (Navy rules, FCC rules, INTERCO). We would request a rescue and assistance team, who would then come over on a boat with a pump. But we had just watched them sit on their asses, deaf as can be, for 2.5 hours, freezing our asses off, only a miracle away from either burning or drowning in freezing water. So we sent them "fuck you" and struck below, since now, with the pump, we had firefighting water.
Why didn't we blow up? Every indication I just gave pointed to it. We would have been the largest man-made conventional explosion in history, ever since that one French BB in WW1. It's this kinda shit that makes you believe in God. It's also the kind of shit that makes you believe that Moosally's retirement was forced, especially in light of the fact that his ship had just suffered a major catastrophe, which was on the scale of what we were facing. I mean, you should have been aboard the Iowa. I was, and their material condition was absolute shit. They didn't have nearly the amount of pride or discipline that we did. It showed from the crews' shaggy hair, to their dungy dungarees, to their shitty-looking deck, to their rusty paint, to their warped doors, to their worn gaskets. All that shit adds up, and if they can't iron their shirts, then they can't fold their firehoses correctly, and they can't close doors quickly, and they can't get ready for battle. Fuck those fucking fuckers, they fucked themselves, and Moosally taught em how to do it.
