When I was at the squadron, my commanding officer, asked me if I would like to be his Yeoman, and fly up the Bremerton, Washington, to sail back on the carrier. I had never been on an aircraft carrier before, and my skipper knew that I had ship board experience, as most of the other Yeoman, did not have any. He told me to pick another Yeoman that wanted to go with me, so I asked Debbie if she wanted to go too, and she said, "Yes."
We all had our stuff ready, and on the airplane. We took off the ground, in an airplane that was headed for Bremerton, Washington. When we were getting closer to the airport, we were told, over the loud speaker, that this was going to be, the first time an airplane of this size, had ever landed at the small private airport, we were going to land at. All of a sudden, it seemed like everyone on the plane started to wonder, if we were going to crash, when we landed, or run out of runway, and hit stuff.
As the plane came down, it immediately came to a screeching sound, as they had tried to lock up the brakes. We slid down the whole runway, and came to the very end of it. We were lucky I guess. There were already fire engines, and ambulances, there waiting, just in case something happened.
My commanding officer, told me that the admiral was not on board the carrier, and the chief of staff was not there either. Only the CO and XO of the aircraft carriers, and my skipper, were the highest guys on board right now.
When we got on board the aircraft carrier, it was the first time I had ever been on one, and I always wondered what they were like. The ship was just so huge when you walked up the gangway, and across the deck, and into the airplane hangar section, of the ship. Inside, it is so gigantic looking, that it just looks like you are in a super sized warehouse, and you are not on a boat. The hangar bays, inside the belly of the ship, was enormous, in size. It seemed to take forever to go from one place, to another, on the ship. It was like the size of a 10 story shopping mall.
The first time we were out to sea, I heard the loudest sound, go threw out the ship, and I could even feel the aircraft carrier move a bit, it seemed. I thought, "What the hell was that?" We must of just hit another ship, or rock or something, I thought. It turns out, it was the catapult, which is a long wire cable, that is just like a rubber band, that they pull back, and it shoots the airplane right off the carriers flight deck, at a super fast speed, to get it airborne quickly and fast.
It is the loudest thing you will hear, and it goes on almost constantly, while you are aboard the ship. The guys that get carrier duty, they are some tough sailors, if you ask me. Give me a destroyer any day of the week. You can know all the guys pretty much, from department to department, on a destroyer, but an aircraft carrier, with over 5,000 people on it, it is just too big, if you ask me, but it is very amazing, to watch things in operation.
It seemed like each time you had to do something, it was always on the other end of the ship. When you walk around on the ship, you are always walking, and every 20 feet or so, you have to raise your feet, to get threw water tight compartment doors, even if it is a long hallway, there will be a lot of doors you go threw, and each time you lift your legs up, you have to lower your head each time also, so you don't hit your forehead on the water tight doors. That is what makes sinking a ship, so hard to sink.
It might have 1,000 rooms, or compartments as they are called, and each door has a rubber seal, and metal handles, they call dogs, that you physically tighten down, when you want to make the room air and water tight. Now if you closed all the water tight doors on the ship, and most of them just stay open during regular working hours, and nothing else is going on, it would be very hard to make it go underwater, even if part of the ship got blown up.
It would be very hard to sink a ball, for example, if it was filled with hundreds of tiny little air bubbles. So many air bubbles, that it would just keep it afloat, even if you tore out the sides, or bottoms of the ship. Well that is what we all hoped anyway.
Since my commanding officer was the highest ranking officer on board, he was also in charge of the other squadrons while he was on board. Me and Debbie, had a job, to set up a message center, and just keep the skipper informed, of all the confidential and secret messages that came in, and keep the messages organized. Really, there was not much work to do at all, while we were out to sea.
I did a lot of reading, because waiting for a message to come in from radio, might come only once every 30 minutes. And to take the message, when they came in, and organize it into a binder, was not that hard. The skipper was not that busy either.
Me and Debbie decided to split the work load, she could work in the day time, and I would work in the night time. I did not want to work in the day time, because it would be more full of officers in the day time, and the evening would be less hectic, and besides, since Debbie was a pretty yeoman, no one was going to give her, very much work to do. They did not have any regular sleeping quarters for her, so they set her up in the captain's inboard cabin, with some other girls, that were on board. At that time, the carriers were not set up for ladies on board, so they would not really make her do anything hard, but I'm sure she was getting a lot of looks, with over 5,000 guys on board, and maybe 10 girls.
While one of the evenings the skipper was in the room, we were working out of, I told him about how I had given my truck to this car lot, that said they take over your payments, and your vehicle will be paid off. Well, right before I left for this trip, the bank had called me, and said I had missed my truck payment. I told them I sold the truck to a car lot, that makes the payments. They said they never got it, and I was still responsible.
I drove down to where I thought my truck had been put up for sale again, in San Diego, and the business was totally gone. I could not believe it, I immediately had that bad feeling in my stomach. I walked around, and found a person at the building. I asked them, "What happened to the car lot?" He said they were 3 months behind on their rent, and moved out in the middle of the night.
My skipper told me, "When we get back to San Diego, you take some time off, and take care of your truck." He told me when he was first starting out, he had gotten taken on the first house he had ever bought, and he could understand what I was going threw. He was a really nice captain, and a super guy.
I finally did find my truck, and the company I had given it to, had sold it to another man, that was retired from the Navy. Lucky enough for me, the Navy guy was an honest guy. The car lot, had charged him $1,500 for a down payment, and then he was supposed to send them the truck payments, but after I told him what had happened, and that it was still my truck, we worked it out, where he sent me the payments each month, until the end of the payments, and then I gave him the title to it. I got lucky he was an honest guy.
In the office we were working in, we took two other officers with us. A woman lieutenant legal officer, and another lieutenant commander, that was a male, and also presumed to be gay, from all the guys back at the squadron anyway. This guy was a weasel. The skinniest officer I had ever seen, and he just talked so lady like.
Back then, you could smoke a cigarette, just about anywhere you wanted to on the ship, and I was the only one that smoked in the office. The lady legal officer, we brought with us, was not to well at all, the majority of the whole trip back to San Diego, so she was not around much. She had the worst case of sea sickness, so I would guess she had never been to sea before, on a ship.
The aircraft carrier has about 5,000 guys on it, it was Hugh. I don't think I would ever want to be stationed on a ship with that many people. I had spent a lot of time on a ship with 1,300 people, and that seemed like a lot, you could not know most of those people. On the destroyer, that had around 300 people on it, that was nice, they called that the Cadillac of ships, because it was designed with the enlisted guys in mind. It was even named after an enlisted medical corpsman.
On the aircraft carrier, the ship was designated into three areas. There was the regular area of the ship, where all your shops, offices, storage rooms, and just about everything else, and was open to everyone, to come and go as they pleased. Up above, a few more levels, was called, "Officer Country". This is where all the officers have their wardroom, staterooms and pretty much work out of that area, if they are not down in their departments, below.
Enlisted were not supposed to go up there, unless you were on business. Above Officer's Country, was a place called, "Flag Country", this was a part of the ship, just for the admiral, CO, XO, the admirals Chief of Staff, and any other officers, the admiral wanted to have stay there, while out to sea.
Both of my first two ships, had Officer's Country, but I never heard of Flag Country before, and even the officers were not supposed to go into Flag Country.
When I was sitting in the message room we had set up one night, the skipper from my squadron was in the office, and we were talking. He asked me if I wanted to see how the admiral lives, since he was not on board, and my skipper, who was a full bird captain, was using the chief of staff's quarters.
He took me up there, and it is really cool and comfortable, from the air conditioning. He showed me around their staterooms, offices, bathrooms, lounge, kitchen and eating areas. Boy, if the guys down in engineering, or flight deck operations, could see how the admiral, and all these other big brass boys live, they would not wonder any longer, why they like to go out to sea all the time.
It is just like something Donald Trump would set up for himself or something. The admiral's dining table, was about 25 feet long. He had a couple of nice long brown leather couches, big screen TV, full size bed, full size bathroom, complete kitchen with private chef, all compliments of the Navy. Sure you could watch a war training film on that big screen TV, but you could also watch any other kind of movie, and I'm sure they did.
The admiral also had a nice helicopter he had made up for himself. It was more of a personal looking helicopter, on the inside, to me anyway. He had it all redone, with different fabrics, and it looked expensive looking. It would be used by him, to fly around from ship to ship, when the battle group was out in the ocean, and he would also let the chaplain and others use it. I was told, that it was made, so that it could be put back together quickly, in time of war. It looked like a limo helicopter to me, but I'm sure the admiral earned it.
