Around the summer of 1985 the mighty Saratoga, CV-60, was having major aches and pains with one of it’s weapons elevators and the stator in a generator was having serious issues too. She had a scheduled tour through the sunny Caribbean followed by a port visit to St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. As you can imagine this beat the hell out of the North Atlantic or even the Mediterranean. So…it was decided that rather than hold the ship in port that my shipyard would embark a crew of seasoned, highly skilled craftsmen (well, one or two of us were!) and we’d make repairs en route and hopefully be done before the ship was too far out. So we loaded up, had our gear craned onto the elevator and much to the disgust of the crew walked aboard looking for where to place our heads.
Normally, civilians like us would be berthed with the Chiefs but as this was a last minute add on we were scattered all over enlisted berthing (yes, I was told about “duty rack”, no I didn’t sleep much that first night). Our first day, at least for me and my welder Jimmy Pallet, was pretty light. We ran our burning lines down to the generator room where the stator was and then just sat down on Standby in the First Class Petty Officer Lounge (part of a messdecks) which was where the second deck access to the weapons elevator was. We got to go up to Buzzards Roost on the island to watch flight ops (very cool stuff, came away covered in unburnt jet fuel and nearly deaf) and finished our day helping the machinists tweak the elevator. The next day we were supposed to heat the rotor up to let the stator drop out (heat makes metal expand and the rotor is heated, the stator slid into position and then cooled till it’s secured). Now this rotor was about 4 feet in diameter and heavy as hell. It was suspended by two chain falls with a third holding the stator. We went down, made sure everything was ready, got my gauges on the bottles of gas and oxygen then went to lunch. Before we could get back, a Broken Arrow drill was called away. This simulates a nuke that has been released by mistake and the whole ship goes on Security Alert.
Four hours later, we went to see if we could get this done and found an unpleasant surprise: My gauges were gone and they were the ONLY gauges aboard the ship. We used propane gas, the ship used acetylene and you can NOT switch the gauges. Things were looking grim and there was talk of flying gauges out from Mayport when I remembered something that we had just explained to the project manager and the GE factory rep. I told the PM that we needed to talk to the ships Fire Marshall ASAP. The Fire Marshall was a full Commander and a busy man and wasn’t really thrilled to have to listen to Joe Yardbird. Then I explained that the gauges were probably lifted because they are much smaller and lighter that the Navy gauges…but that was NOT a good thing. I explained to him about expansion rates of the two gases and that there could be a possible flashback and explosion, especially since the Navy did not use flash back arrestors on their torches like we did. Bad stuff could happen. Big boom. Sailors dead.
20 minutes later an announcement came over the 1MC (shipwide public address system): The Captain said that the gauges must be returned in the next 30 minutes to the officers quarterdeck, no questions asked or the entire ship would not get leave in St. Thomas. 5 minutes later the gauges showed up! I grabbed them, hooked them up, we got everyone down in the generator space, tech reps, ships force fire watch, Chiefs, etc. I started the big damn torch I had and was told that could take 3 hours to heat the rotor enough to drop the stator. Told them 40 minutes, tops. I ran around that rotor, heating this spot, heating that spot while the GE tech rep kept sticking his nose in trying to tell me how to heat it up. I flipped the torch once in his direction and singed his eyelashes and he shut the hell up and left me alone. 30 minutes later, the Stator dropped out.
Next day we’re told we’re flying out on the COD, a C-2 Grumman Greyhound that is almost as old as me. The stator is in the back of the COD lashed down and the 6 of us who were leaving got our instruction on COD safety: here’s the emergency hatch, blah, blah, but don’t bother, this things sink like a stone. Besides…look at that 750 pounds of stator looking at you. In the COD, you sit facing the rear of the aircraft. I was sitting next to the window that looked at the starboard (right) engine and all I could see was oil streaming out of it. We ran the engines up and I’m like, CAT SHOT!!!!… I freaking wish! Nope, we went to the very end of the flight deck, turned around, ran the engines up to insane and just tolled down the angle (you come off the ship half way down:
We were going SO SLOW and I’m like surely he’s going to hit the damn brakes and ask for a Cat Shot…Nope. We rolled right along until we came to the end of the angle and dropped like a turd falling off a 10 foot tall camel. I was looking at the underside of the catwalk I’d repaired a year ago. We were dead. Somehow…slowly…every so slowly, with the engines howling we managed to keep it out of the water. How we managed to not go in was a mystery to me. Tires on the landing gear had to be soaking wet, it’s only 65 feet from the flight deck to the water and I swear we fell at least a 100 feet! 90 minutes later we landed at Jacksonville NAS (instead of Mayport where our cars were and which we flew over). I swore right then and there before I ever got back in a damn COD again I’d swim home first, I’d take my chances with the sharks! This Is No Shit, TINS!!!
This is Christmas time so no comment from me about the Grumman being older than you. :)
That's a hell of an experience. It's great that you were able to spend some time out on Sara and enjoy the luxury of a COD flight.