Stand BY-Y-Y to Start Engines

by Daniel V Gallery

  "They told me my Pentagon press card would let me go anywhere on board," said Parker.

  "With your press card, plus a background check by the FBI, security investigation by CIA, and a Q clearance from the Atomic Energy Commission, they might let yoa peek in the magazine door for a few seconds," said Willy. "Otherwise, no dice."

  "What's so secret about an atom bomb these days?" asked Parker. "The Russians have got 'em."

  "I know," said Willy. "But we've got a new kind that can knock the whole world flat on its ass. We're trying to keep it to ourselves."

  "I'll take that up with the Admiral," said Parker, "and maybe I'll write about some things besides those you show me. How do I know they won't mangle my stuff before sending it out?"

  "They will always discuss anything with you that ought to be changed," explained Willy, "and you'll get an exact copy of what the radio room sends out."

  "Humph," observed Parker, scowling ominously to show it had better be exact.

  The next day Willy began his program of showing Parker what makes the wheels go round on the Guadalcanal. There are many wheels on a big aircraft carrier and explaining them is no small job.

  He dressed Parker up in a G suit, took him up to the ready room, and had him sit in on a pilot briefing. There he rubbed elbows with pilots ranging from eager new kids fresh out of Pensacola to tough old pros from the Korean War and even Admiral Halsey's Third Fleet. When word came over the squawk box, "Pilots man your planes," he shepherded him across the flight deck through the whirling props, snorting jet intakes, and hot exhausts, and buckled him into the rear seat of an A8J.

  Ace was rubbering around when they got fired off the catapult and the sudden G forces slammed his head back against the rest where it should have been after the "ready to go" signal. His hard helmet absorbed most of the jolt. They rendezvoused with the rest of the air group and ran through half an hour of tactical maneuvers with Willy explaining everything over the interphone as he expertly tooled the plane through the drill in the middle of the formation.

  On the landing Willy came up the groove with a "Roger" all the way from the landing signal officer, snagged the No. 1 wire just as the plane ahead pulled out of the landing area, and boiled out of it himself just in time for the plane behind him to take his "cut" and get aboard. Not a bad morning's work, if I do say so myself, thought Willy as he climbed out on the wing to help Parker get loose from his harness.

  Ace had unbuckled his harness in the air, so he got his head banged up against the instrument board from the reverse, G forces on landing.

  "Howdya like it?" asked Willy.

  "All right," said Parker. "Seems like a kind of slam-bang, hit-or-miss operation though."

  They spent the afternoon in the Combat Information Center. CIC is the brain center of the task group. Everything that happens is channeled there by radio, radar, sonar, a voice tube, then evaluated and acted on by the controllers or passed up to the Admiral or the Captain it it's too big for them to handle.

  In the old days the bridge was the place on a ship where all top-level decisions were made. Now on most ships, when things start popping, you'll find the Captain and maybe even the Admiral in CIC. There they can "see" everything for miles around at night or even in fog on the big vertical glass plotting board on which sailors with grease pencils plot the dope as fast as it comes in.

  "These guys all write backwards," observed Parker as he stood next to one of the plotters behind the big board.

  "You're on the wrong side of the display board," explained Willy. "It reads right on the other side."

  Willy got Parker a set of earphones and let him listen in while the controllers were running an intercept.

  "It sounds like a bunch of comic strip characters with all this 'Roger,' 'over,' and 'Wilco' stuff," observed Parker.

  "This is where Buck Rogers got that lingo from," explained Willy. "There's a reason for all of it too. You've got to follow an exact drill or the air would be jammed when things get hot and all those funny words are picked so they can't be mistaken for any other words."

  Next they went aft to the landing signal officer's platform on the port end of the flight deck. "Paddles," as the LSO is called, is a cross between a one-armed paperhanger with the itch and a cat with fleas on a hot stove when he is waving the boys in. He has a sharp-eyed sailor helper who checks to see that the incoming pilots don't forget to lower their wheels and tail-hook as they turn into the groove. If they do, Paddles waves them off and debits their account in the geedunk shop with fifteen gallons of ice cream for the flight deck crew.

  Sometimes pilots crowd the port side too close coming up the groove and Paddles and his helpers have to go overboard from the platform. A net sticks out over the side to catch them. The webbing of the net is badly scorched from the language they use when they land in it.

  Willy explained the new mirror landing system which brings pilots aboard by guiding them in with a narrow beam of light. The LSO listening to the explanation spat contemptuously. He had just given a lad a frantic wave-off after an erratic zigzag approach up the groove. "If that guy had been coming in on that beam thing they would of found blood all over but no brains when they swept up the wreck," he said.

  They spent the rest of the afternoon with the flight deck crew. Willy explained how the white, yellow, red and green T shirts indicated the fire fighters, traffic directors, ordnance men, and arresting-gear operators. They watched a grizzled aircraft handler respot the deck for the next flight, using miniature scale models on the "Ouija board" in bis office at the base of the island. Then they saw the plane captains and tractor drivers translate his plans into action, squeezing planes into spots with inches to spare on either wing just as the Ouija board said they could. The tractor drivers all think they are cut out to be jet pilots, and except when they have planes in tow, they go roaring around the deck in a way that would paralyze the wildest hot rodders with fright.

  At the end of the busy day Willy asked, "Ya getting any stuff ya can use, Mr. Parker?"

  "Maybe," said the news-hawk.

  The next day Willy gave him the $10 rubberneck tour of the ship from the anchor windlass room on the fo'c'sle to the rudder room just over the screws. The bow anchors weigh twenty tons, about a pound for each ton of ship, and their cables are forged from steel bars as big around as the fat end of a baseball bat.

  The Bosun who showed them around the fo'c'sle was a grizzled, salty character with so many years of sea duty he was reputed to have served as an apprentice boy with Noah in the Ark. He handled those big anchor cables as if they were watch chains, could make a flying moor with one hand tied behind him, and could slap a cross cringle gosset on both chains while he was putting the mooring swivel on without getting more than half a fathom of slack in either chain. He explained the workings of the fo'c'sle, the anchor windlass, and the chain lockers to Parker in words that were encrusted with barnacles and would have warmed the heart of Father Neptune. Parker didn't dig him at all.

  They were shown around the engine room and fire rooms by a relaxed character called Scuttlebutt Grogan. Scuttlebutt, a first-class petty officer and veteran of World War II, had made chief several times but had never been able to hold it because MPs and shore patrol officers are so narrow-minded. He was the fresh-water king of the ship and explained how he distilled all the fresh water used on board out of sea water, and how it took about half a gallon of fuel oil to distill one gallon of fresh water. He had unprintable opinions about the landlubbers who come out of boot camp these days wearing sailors' clothes and who think, for gawd-sake, that all you have to do to get water aboard ship is open a valve in the bottom and let it in. "I've actually seen 'em try to use fresh water to swab the deck," he said in awed tones as if he had caught them trying to burn trash in the magazines. "I'm getting out on thirty at the end of this cruise," he observed as he showed them through the engine rooms. "They don't need practical monkey-wrench engineers like me any more. Everything is getting automated now. P
retty soon all it will take to run this bucket is a guy wearing glasses who needs a haircut sitting in a control booth punching buttons."

  Next the Chief Master-at-Arms took them through the crew's quarters and messes. The Chief, with six gold hash-marks on his sleeve, obviously figured that, no matter what the Captain and the Admiral might think, this was his ship. "I have a hell of a time trying to run this ship with the juvenile delinquents we're getting in the Navy these days," he observed.

  "You don't think much of present-day sailors, do you, Chief?" asked Willy.

  The Chief spat contemptuously. "We got a new bunch of twenty fugitives from the draft board just before we sailed. Fresh out of boot camp. You oughta see 'em. I'd swap the whole bunch for a bucket of oily rags."

  "Do you have any trouble maintaining discipline with the new type of sailors?" asked Parker.

  The Chief looked at him in amazement. "Discipline?" he snorted. "There's no such thing in the Navy as discipline any more. The biggest mistake this Navy ever made was when it abolished flogging. You can't look cross-eyed at a sailor any more or he writes to his congressman about brutality."

  They had just arrived in a bunkroom where a group of sailors were loafing and horsing around. "Get out of here, you rubber swab handles," roared the Chief. "Get the hell up on deck where you belong."

  The sailors fled like leaves before an autumn gale.

  "Every man has his own bunk and locker now," observed Willy. "Before the war they used to sleep in hammocks and keep their clothes in a sea bag."

  "Used to wash in a bucket, too," said the Chief. "Now we got individual wash bowls, showers with curtains on them, deluxe plumbing in the heads, movies on the hangar deck every night, and two chaplains to tell your troubles to. The Navy ain't what it used to be," he added sadly.

  "How many sailors have you got in the brig now, Chief?" asked Willy. ("That's the ship's prison," he explained to Parker.)

  "None," said the Chief. "I never put nobody in the brig on none of my ships. But if they get out of line, they wish they were in the brig before I get through with them."

  Next the chief commissary steward proudly showed them around the galley, bakeshop, butchershop, and mess halls. "We feed on the cafeteria system," he explained. "That's the only way you can feed on a big carrier where you have continuous air operations and people are always eating at odd times. The chow lines are open twenty-four hours around the clock."

  "There's the menu for dinner tonight," said Willy, pointing to a blackboard in the galley. "They have a choice of steak or roast chicken today."

  "You can take all you want in the chow line," said the CMAA, "but you gotta eat all you take. When I catch 'em trying to throw food away I give 'em a bad time."

  "How many men do you have on KP duty?" asked Parker.

  "Hardly any now," replied the chief. "We got mechanical spud peelers, dishwashers, and garbage disposal. About all the mess cooks have to do now is wipe off the tables and swab the decks."

  "You mean to say the cooks do that?" asked Parker.

  "Not the rated cooks," said Willy, "It's the KPs that you're talking about. We call 'em mess cooks, in the Navy. The regular galley personnel used to be called ship's cooks but under the new rating system they call themselves food preparation technicians."

  "They're still belly robbers in the my book," growled the CMAA.

  "It's quite a job feeding 3000 sailors," observed the commissary steward, "but we serve three good meals a day, fair-weather or foul, whether we're in the tropics or North Atlantic. It's all the same to us."

  "That's the one big thing about the Navy," said the CMAA. "That's why I shipped in it instead of the Army. You always take your bunk and your mess table into battle with you."

  The bakeshop was presided over by a fat sailor in an immaculate apron and a chef's hat who looked as though he had just stepped out of the galley in the Waldorf.

  "How many loaves did you bake today, Frenchy?" asked the chief.

  "Two thousan'," replied Frenchy, "and now I gotta make eight hondred goddamn lemon cream pies... pies I don't mind... but when the order sheet says make whip cream on top, that'sa too much."

  "He's always beefin' about something," said the chief. "If we didn't specify whip cream, he probably would put it on anyway."

  On a shelf near the door there were six big cakes with fancy frosting and "Happy Birthday" on top in big red letters. "Who are they for?" asked Parker.

  "Everybody gets a cake on his birthday," explained the chief. "The exec's office gives us a list of the birthdays every week. It makes the kids feel better when they're away from home on their birthdays. It was the chief master at arms' idea," he added.

  "Yeah," growled the CMAA, looking embarrassed. "You gotta wet-nurse these kids all the time or they're apt to bust out crying in their roast beef and mashed potatoes."

  Next stop on the tour was the ship's store, owned and operated by one Satchel Aft Jones, veteran of many battles in Admiral Halsey's Third Fleet and many more with the police along the waterfronts of the world.

  "What kind of stuff do you sell here?" asked Parker.

  "Everything a sailor needs," said Satchel Aft proudly. "Toothpaste, shaving soap, razor blades, stationery, comic books, and poogie bait."

  "Poogie bait? What's that?"

  "Jewelry," said Satchel Aft. "Necklaces, earring, wristwatches, brooches, fancy lipsticks, compacts, engagement rings - even wedding rings if you've got to get one."

  "Why should the government sell that kind of stuff to sailors?" demanded Parker.

  "That's what the shysters along Canal Street are screaming all the time," said Satchel Aft. "Credit jewelry outfits - the junk industry, I call 'em. They got pretty near as big a lobby in Congress as the oil industry. They sell you a lot of phony stuff on credit, charge you too much in the first place, and give you easy terms so you'll be paying for it the rest of your life. All my stuff is legitimate. If you pay for diamonds or gold, that's what you get. You pay cash on the line and that's the end of it. Four percent profit for Uncle Sugar and no overhead for bill collectors or lawyers. But there's plenty of trade left for the junk dealers - you'll see dozens of them on the dock when we get into San Diego. Sailors are leery of stuff they buy from the government. Instead of getting their money's worth in my shop, a lot of them would rather buy junk ashore and get screwed."

  Next door to Satchel Aft's emporium was the geedunk shop. "What in the world do they sell?" asked Parker.

  "Gook," replied the CMAA. "Ice cream, candy, pop, Coca-Cola, Seven-Up, and all that kind of belly-wash. These guys lap it up," he said, shaking his head sadly at the idea that two-fisted sailormen could fall to such depths.

  "Where do you get your ice cream from?" asked Parker.

  "Make it out of powder," explained the chief. "We can turn it out by the barrelful. Whenever we refuel a destroyer at sea, we always give them about twenty gallons. During the war we used to swap movies during fueling, and when a destroyer came alongside with a hot Betty Grable film they often demanded fifty gallons before they would give it to us."

  On the way back to the hangar deck they passed a dogged-down watertight door with a sign on it, "keep out... you too." Alongside it was a big trash bin. "That's the incinerator compartment," said Willy. "You can't throw trash overboard because we don't want to leave a trail of stuff behind us that the enemy might find and follow in wartime, so we burn it all up in a big trash furnace in there. Would you like to see it?"

  "Oh... I don't think that would be of any interest," said Parker.

  "The guy who runs it is a real character," said Willy, "Fatso Gioninni. You might get a couple of good stories out of him. Somebody ought to write a book about him."

  The chief master at arms frowned apprehensively at the idea of anybody interviewing Fatso and led the way farther on.

  "No," said Parker, "let's go on and see something else."

  Their next stop was the main radio where half a dozen radiomen sat in front of typewriters wi
th phones clamped on their heads listening for the ship's call letters among the dots and dashes chattering constantly on the circuits they were guarding. As one began pounding his typewriter, Willy explained: "This ship's call letters wake them up like an alarm bell. They claim that they can copy traffic automatically after a while. They say the dots and dashes come in their ears, bypass their brains, and make the right fingers move on the keyboard. They don't even know what they're copying. One of them told me he can read a comic book and copy traffic at the same time."

  "Yeah," said the supervisor, "I've heard 'em claim that, too. But I let one try it one time and the dispatch he was copying from CNO came out full of zots, whams, and zowies. You can't bypass a radioman's brains, because he hasn't got any."

  "The coding machine is in that room over there," said Willy, pointing to a door with restricted area painted on it in big red letters. "Only communications watch officers are allowed in there. They take an incoming secret dispatch, run it through the machine and break it, and give you the clear. They code the outgoing stuff on the machine and on short messages they sometimes stick meaningless padding on the end to make it harder for snoopers to just guess what the message is about. During the Battle of Leyte Gulf, when Admiral Halsey got sucked in by those Jap decoys and left San Bernardino Strait unguarded, Nimitz send him a message; 'Where are your battleships?' Some crazy CWO stuck padding on the end: 'All the world wants to know.' When Bull Halsey read it he didn't recognize it as padding, an he yanked off his hat, threw it on the deck, and jumped on it."