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U.S.S. Green Bay (PG-101)
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The following comparison has been rendered impotent to make it more family friendly, but you get the idea:
Question:
What is the difference between a Fairy Tale and a Sea Story?
Answer:
A Fairy Tale starts out, "Once upon a time ...".
A Sea Story starts out, "This ain't no sh*t but ...".
The contents of this page are based on actual fact, or my memory of them. As a fifty-something old fart who left the USS Green Bay when barely out of my teens, my memory ain't always terribly accurate. So maybe I am making all of this up and don't even know it.
So, this ain't no sh*t, but way back when I was on the USS Green Bay (PG-101) ...
Trevor Jones, the curator of History at the Neville Public Museum in Green Bay, WI, says that they are working on a very small exhibit about the USS Green Bay centered around a scale model of the ship. The exhibit is to open on 14 June 2003. He is looking for stuff to use in the exhibit, including reminiscences. He asks,
"I've read all the promotional stuff about the Green Bay, but was it true? Was she really very fast? How cramped was she? What was shipboard life like?"
Here are the reminiscences of a fifty-something guy trying to remember life some thirty years before when the world was young and everything was new.
Please contribute your own USS Green Bay stories to Trevor Jones at email address Jones_TM@co.brown.wi.us. And, if you don't mind me posting them on this page, cc your stories to me at tomd@mactom.com. Thanks!
"... but was it true? Was she really very fast?"
I never knew what our actual speeds were. The top speed was classified. The tour pamphlet statistics page says that the ship was capable of "over 30 knots" (34.5 mph, 55.6 km/hr) on gas turbine. I remember our tour spiel as saying that the USS Green Bay was capable of "in excess of 45 knots" (51.8 mph, 83.3 km/hr). I don't remember what the official line was, but she certainly felt awfully darned fast for an in-the-water ship.
I believe it was our second Engineering Officer, LTJG "Wolfie" Davis, who tried to water ski behind the ship in Acapulco harbor. The ship was plenty fast enough. In spite of three foot swells we came up to speed very smartly. However, the three foot swells HAMMERED Mr. Davis, who never managed to stay up for more than a few seconds. We gave up without him ever getting a decent ride out of it.
We were fast enough to nearly "plane out", that is, to nearly come completely out of the water for most of the length of the ship like a speed boat. We kicked up a bit of a rooster tail at top speed (I may be making that up). Not bad for a ship that weight about 280 tons.
My favorite annual equipment test were the ones in which we went from dead stop to crash ahead, then at maximum speed went to crash astern. This bordered on destructive testing.
The equivalent process in an automobile would be this, if you could do it at all (PLEASE DON'T DO THIS!)
The way it was done on this ship was this:
I don't know what distance was used getting up to top speed, or in getting to max reverse, but it was not much. In spite of our best efforts sh*t went flying everywhere. Anything that wasn't properly tied down, and some that was, became missiles.
"Peeling out" would set you back in yer seat. It would not plaster you back like a Corvette, but ya felt it. It was very disconcerting below decks where there were was no frame of reference: the ship was the entire world. Imagine sitting in a windowless TV room when your entire house decides to accelerate HARD in one direction, then HARD in the opposite direction.
"How cramped was she?"
Let's take the berthing compartments below decks as an example. Note that it is "berthing", with an "e", not "birthing" with an "i". These are the cramped living quarters of enlisted men below E7. Chiefs and officers had palatial cabins on the main deck level.
See figure "Schematic Of Starboard Berthing Compartment", below.
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I cannot remember the exact layout of the starboard berthing compartment, but the drawing to the right is reasonably close. There were two mirror image berthing compartments, with the gas turbine engine room between them for most of their length. The starboard berthing compartment had a hatch to the gas turbine room; the port did not. The berthing compartments were about halfway down the length of the ship, one on each outboard side of the gas turbine room. The ship is 23.5 feet wide. If the berthing compartments and the turbine got equal shares of that width, each would be roughly 7.8 feet wide. That sounds about right; roughly the same width as a fifth wheel RV. Of course, being low in the hull the berthing compartments were narrower at the bottom than at the top, say 6 feet wide at the deck of the berthing compartment. Also, the forward end was wider than the after end. The berthing compartments might have been around 30 feet long, including the head. That is also the size of a moderately sized RV (ours is 33 feet long). Now comes the cramped part. In a space that would be somewhat tight for an intimate couple full time, we had something like ten sailors sleeping, bathing, etc. There was not enough floor space for everyone to stand up at once. Ten guys sharing one shower (NOT at the same time), one urinal, and one commode, could get a little stressful from time to time. Most of the bunks were in three-bunk tiers with the lockers under the mattress, except (I think) for the top bunk, whose locker was free standing. It could get quite crowded when everyone was trying to get dressed at once. Had to be careful not to end up with a leg in someone else's pants, or ya'd have an accidental sack race. |
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Usually the most junior folks got the top racks (bunks), and the most senior took the lowest. Somehow even though I was very junior, I ended up with a bottom rack. Okay, not "somehow". I got it because I came in drunk one night with a belly full of malt liquor, meatball sub, pizza, burritos, and other stuff. I climbed up into my top rack, and started feeling sick. I did not make it out of the bunk in time. I made quite a mess, which I thought I had thoroughly cleaned up in the light of the red night-time lamps.
However, when the guy I worked for at the time, EN2 Ernie Pirone, got up in the morning and put his foot in his shoe, I discovered that I had missed something. He did the my-shoe-is-full-of-vomit dance. Worse, the compartment was carpeted. It smelled rather ripe. Ernie was not thrilled with the smell, so made me switch bunks with him. Actually, given all the other smells, human and engine room combined, it wasn't so bad.
"What was shipboard life like?"
That's a tough one! For this 19-22 year old, now fifty-something, the ship was a blast. It was tight quarters, the ride was rough, it was noisy. The parts of the ship I worked and lived in always stank of hot oil, engine exhaust, and whatever it was that grew in the bilges.
I must admit that I did not take well to "military discipline", but I loved the work, the ship, the travel, and enjoyed most of the folks I worked with. I don't think I have done anything so difficult and challenging either before or since. Nor have I done anything since that was such a great adventure.
The days were long. I no longer remember exactly, but we mustered around 08:00. Our nominal work day was over at around 17:00. But wait! This ain't no civilian job. There is duty to stand. There are drills and training. When off duty, I still had to relieve the duty crew for chow. Quite often I lived on less than four hours sleep a night.
We rarely were underway for more than a week at a time without pulling into port for a few days. Maybe two weeks at sea, tops. But they were brutal weeks. The PG's rock'n'roll more tied up alongside a pier than most ships do at sea. At sea even mild swells produce rolling and pitching that would generally make a destroyer escort sailor go searching for Ralph over the side. Then toss in the engineroom smells ...
There was no rest, really. The ship was always in motion. I learned to sleep holding onto something. Sitting required constant adjustments to stay upright (or actively holding onto something). Walking was a real trip, literally. And this was in calm seas. Not as bad as the little commercial fishing boats on the Oregon coast, but rough enough.
After one week of Refresher Training (RefTra) off the coast of California, we tied up on a Friday evening. My friends and I made plans to go to Tiajuana the next morning. I had never been so tired in my life, so I hit the rack at the first possible moment. I don't know whether I ate that evening or not. I got up kind of groggy, but ready to head south to Tiajuana. When I asked my buddies when they would be ready to go, they said, "We already been." What? How'd you already go and get back this morning? "This is Sunday. You slept through Saturday. We shook you and shook you, but you would not wake up. You were still breathing, so we just let you sleep and went to T.J. for the day." Guess it was a rough week.
The USS Green Bay was stationed in San Diego, CA, for the first couple of years of her career in the Navy. Storms are infrequent and mild, by east-coast hurricane standards. Still, storms do happen.
Having grown up as a land-locked WV hillbilly, when the ship got word of a storm with gale force winds, my first thought was, "Great! We all get to go home for a couple of days!" 'Cause ya know back home in the hills when there is a really bad storm, you close up shop and hunker down at home.
Imagine my horror when I was told to prepare to get underway! "Are you NUTS?" Then it was explained to me that a storm like that would pound the ship against the pier and do severe damage, or even sink it. Made sense. These guys know what they are doing. How much danger can there be?
I rode out most of the storm below decks in engineering, of course. It was something of a rough ride back aft in the engineroom and Enclosed Operating Station (EOS). It was a bit like trying to work in a huge elevator filled with running diesel engines while the elevator jumped violently from floor to floor at random. The excursion was not huge. Maybe ten feet at max.
I understand that in terms of excursion, it was much worse up forward, especially forward of the galley in the clerical and supply offices, and worse yet in the boatswain's locker. At the bow of the ship the excursion could be MORE than the height of the waves, and the waves were pretty darned high. A visit to the boatswain locker could get you popped upwards twenty to thirty feet or more in one instant, then slammed down by the same distance the next. Like a BB in a can being shaken. BS floating around the ship later indicated that one member of the deck crew just about got knocked senseless trying to get something out of the forward locker ... at least that was the reason given for this person being a bit senseless.
The galley was a laugh riot in a morbid way. I was following one of the deck crew, Mike Finley (sp?), up the ladder out of the galley. We were carrying our usual coffee back to our work spaces. Mike started up the ladder before me, and was about half way up when I stepped on the bottom rung. We were laughing about the elevator ride up as we struggled to climb the ladder without spilling our coffee. I was near the bottom with one foot on the deck and a good grip on the railing. Mike was near the top trying to turn around and talk to me while he was being flung upward.
You know that saying about things that go up must come down? The elevator dropped. It was a long drop. It was fast drop. One moment we were being launched upward at high speed. The next moment the galley, its deck, and the ladder were dropping away at high speed.
I and my coffee took a spill. Mike, on the other hand, did a coyote sequence from a Road Runner cartoon. He hung in mid-air with a shocked look on his face; horror. No connection to the ladder or anything else for what seemed to be forever. Perfectly poised as if he were still climbing the ladder. Then Mike slipped away from his coffee cup and dropped. The coffee cup just hung there for a moment, then it dropped. The coffee hung in the air still in the shape of the cup, then came to the sudden realization that the cup was no longer holding it up. The coffee dropped.
Mike hit the floor HARD; the coffee cup beaned him; the hot coffee splashed all over him.
Being the jerk that I was, I howled with laughter. I laughed until my sides felt like they were going to split, not from the laughter, but from Mike punching me for laughing ... "I coulda been killed!"
As rough as the ride was, it could (and did) get worse. As long as the bridge crew managed to keep the bow of the ship headed into the waves, and into the wind, we "just" pitched. However, the wind and waves conspired to turn us off course.
With waves higher than the mast of the ship, ya don't want to get turned sideways to the waves. Could just end up rolling down the side of one like a barrel down a hill.
My childhood in the hills of WV served me well. Ignorance truely is bliss. After the worst of the storm a few of us young idiots went topside to peek out a hatch. Worse, some of us actually went out on deck. While we were out there the ship got a bit turned away from the waves. I found myself confronted by what appeared to be a wall of water higher than the ship just feet from my face at the railing. The ship rolled hard. The wall of water was on the other side of the ship. We rolled hard the other way. I scrambled below. One of the bridge crew later told me that we took a couple of 55 degree rolls, and further commented that the ship was only supposed to be able to take a 50 degree roll without capsizing. True or not, I began to comprehend the danger. Bliss was gone.
I don't think I fully appreciated the situation until I read the book, "The Perfect Storm." That was when I understood why some of the older guys were very nervous. I was simply too ignorant to understand how risky the storm could be.
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