Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Our Courtship -- Part Two




.I almost forgot in the first part that the Navy also put one more distraction in the way of our continued slow, but almost constant move toward real courtship. In October, 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis intervened. It was Sunday, Oct. 20 when I was returning to San Diego after a weekend in Bellflower that I really became aware of the problem. Oh, I had read the papers and new that something was up, but this Sunday changed everything.

After church on that Sunday, I started south on along Interstate 5 (still not complete all the way south). As I passed El Toro Marine Base, I noticed that there was a long convoy of Marine vehicles heading into the base from the south -- presumably from Camp Pendleton. As I continued toward San Diego, the convoys became more and more frequent, it was like one big convoy from Camp Pendleton to El Toro. I may be a little slow, but it occurred to me that maybe something was up. Then I passed Camp Pendleton, in Oceanside and now I saw convoy after convoy ahead of me heading to San Diego. Now I was really concerned.

When I arrived on the ship, no one seemed too concerned, it didn't affect us.  JFK was scheduled to speak on Tuesday. When the speech began,. most of the officers were there and we were really anxious to hear what he had to say. After stating all of the facts, the President said something like this, "After reviewing all of the fact, I have come to the conclusion that our only option is to declare. . ." My heart stopped, I thought he was declaring war on Russia. Well, he almost did, but the words that completed the sentence was "a Naval Quarantine." This was bad enough. But, it didn't directly concern us. We had were already loaded with practice ammunition for exercises. We were scheduled for some minor repairs and then some local operations. We watched television, talked for a while and went to bed.

My room mate, Ltjg Bill Rich, was the Communications Officer. We were surprised by the Petty Officer on Watch when he entered our stateroom at 0130 and said, "Mr Rich, we just received an important message that there is a meeting for all Communication Officers to meet on the First Fleet Flagship at 0300 (3 AM). This was really out of the ordinary. Bill came back about the time I was getting up. I asked him what was happening and he responded that we had been assigned to a Task Force which would consisting of the Amphibious Vessels loaded with Marines en route to invade Cuba and escort vessels (including us) to protect them as the traveled to the Panama Canal. We would be leaving on the following Saturday -- but don't talk about this is all Secret at the moment. 

I have never seen anything like San Diego that week. Ships were moving back and forth to North Island and back to the Naval Station 24 hours a day. We were unloading practice ammo and loading a "war load" throughout the night. Everyone could see that something major was happening. But, no one really knew what and when. The Captain informed the officers that we would leave on Saturday, but we were told that it was so sensitive that we couldn't inform our wives or anyone else that we were leaving. The crew wasn't informed at all. I'm not sure that Linda really believes me, but I wanted to call her -- but I didn't. 

Finally Saturday arrived. We were scheduled (before everything changed) to go alongside a pier for some minor repairs (we were tied to a buoy in the middle of the bay). We let loose of the buoy and began to steam out of the harbor. Since I was the Engineer Officer, I was down in Engine Room One -- you can't see where you are going down there. One of my men said, "Seems like a long time to get to the pier. I hope we hurry because I parked in a two hour zone." A lot of stories like this. Some wives even packed up and moved back to there parents (not that morning -- but as time went on.) Finally, the Captain's voice came over the 1MC and announced, "We are leaving for an undisclosed destination and will be gone for an undisclosed amount of time. I'm sorry, but that is all the information that I can disclose." 

That first night, around mid-night, the alarm sounded that we had an unidentified sonar contact. "Set the Sonar Attack Team." It wasn't 10 minutes later than the General Alarm sounded, "No General Quarters, General Quarters, all hands man your battle stations." Our hearts were pounding what is happening. Then the announcement continued, "Fire! Fire!" I hit the main deck and it look like the entire after portion of the ship was on fire. As I had not been relieved as the Damage Control Office, I stooped at Damage Control Central. The first report, "Fire in the uptakes, We are abandoning the Forward Fire (Boiler) Room." Second Report, "We are abandoning the Forward Engine Room." Then, lastly, "The magazines are heating up, so we are preparing to flood them." What on earth was happening? Well, it was a big scare, but it turned out to not to be serious. We cleaned things up and the rest of the voyage was just slow and tedious. We never discovered what the unidentified contact was -- certainly not an enemy submarine.

As we were en route to Panama the situation had resolved. Kruschev had blinked. The crisis was over. It was the closes that I had been to a real war. This was also one more thing that slowed down my pursuit of the pretty Linda Carper. I think that we would have been a lot further along, if this hadn't happened. 

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