The most reflective time - Six weeks of Chief's initiation, aka training. I thought it was a lot of BS until I went through it. You don't learn HOW to be a Chief in six weeks, but you learn WHY you became one. That's why I think it's important to be initiated. It's more than just a paygrade change. I would liken it to what happens over the time you transition into becoming a Marine. Once a Marine, Always a Marine; Once a Chief, Always a Chief. My brother, a retired Chief Boatswain's Mate, put my hat on me for the first time.
Probably the most touching moment was last Memorial Day, when I was standing in my choker whites, watching the flag go up at City Hall in my hometown (Cedar Rapids, Iowa) on July 4th. Listening to the kids read their flag essays at the Shriner- and Legion-sponsored ceremonies. And when the 60-ish man, who I had never before seen in my life, ran out of the coffee shop after me and my friend (an Army vet from the 50's) just to say "thanks". How do you reply to that?
The worst part is leaving your kids behind. Mine understand why I go to sea, and they are proud of it, but it still sucks. My wife's an adult, so she's fine without me, but you miss so much with the kids, especially when they are really little. We waited until I was an E-6 and on shore duty to have them, so that helped, but shore duty only lasts for so long. One more sea tour before I retire.
Hardest job - that would be surviving Naval Nuclear Power School. I learned how to accumulate and dump knowledge so fast that I'm surprised I retain any knowledge at all now. (May I be excused? My brain is full...)
I had some exciting times back when I was Fast Attack Tough, but I can't talk about them... Not much exciting to even THINK about while I was a Boomer Weenie, even when we shot three test missiles, it was kind of anti-climactic.
Best liberty port - a toss up between Portsmouth, England, and Rotterdam, Netherlands. I have never felt so welcome anywhere. To protect the guilty parties, I'll leave the details of said liberty ports, and others, to your imagination...
I do still find something to enjoy about going to work every day. Not every one can say that.
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12:13 AM
PFF
System Bot
BlackHorse Member
Posts: 29 From: Waynesville, NC USA Registered: Nov 2003
I've missed this one because I've been wrenching on my newest car and hanging out with the new little one a lot. However: I was a Specialist in the Army. In from 95 to 98. MOS 63S Heavy wheel mech. ARNG for one year. E4 corporal. Heavy wheel still. ETS from USAR 30 JUN 2003. 62B heavy equipment mech. NSDQ!
[This message has been edited by BlackHorse (edited 02-13-2004).]
Well Chief-I wasn't posing the question to just you-all hands can join in on this part of it. A little sea story that happened in '78 while I was on the USS PF Foster (DD963). Been aboard about 4 months, right out of Gas Turbine school Great Lakes. I was an E-6, and had aft engineering. Naturally, we had an engineering officer, and a E-7 Chief over all of engineering. Gas turbine powered destroyer, for those who don't know. No diesels-no steam-no batteries, except low voltage batteries for emergency lighting, and a small battery internal battery for the computer start controls of each of the 7 engines, and the computers in engineering central control. Turbines are strictly air start only. Propulsion and generators are GT powered-4 LM2500s and 3 Allison 501s respectfully. We're Hong Kong, pierside , completely on shore power for lighting, compressors, a/c etc. You know the deal. We're cold iron. About 0200, We lose shore power. GQ sounds. I'm off watch, but still up from standing watch in central control. I head for aft engineering. The Chief had just came aboard from liberty. Enhancing the local economy, one beer at a time, but he wasn't drunk, that I could tell. A good man all the time I worked for him. He stayed in the chiefs mess most of the time & left me & my crew of E-2's & E-3's alone. Normally, we start gas turbines off low pressure bleed air from a running engine. Hi pressure compressors are also keeping a big bank of air tanks, similar to oxy bottles charged for a high air pressure start, one bank for each of the 3 generators. You already know this 2birds, but others may not. On modern ships, all control can shifted back & forth from engine rooms to central engineering. (ECC) SOP is for central to have control, and only a 1-2 man standing watch for observation and emergency in local engineering. Central can start engines, shut them down, split power etc. Everyting we can do in eng, they can do in central by computer , except emergency manual starts. The bridge has some control also, as does combat control, but not often used. Or-everything can be done at local stations in the engine rooms, (fwd & aft engineering as it is properly called). 2 modes to start a turbine: auto initiate, where the computer does it all, in the proper? sequence, at the proper time, or manual initiate, where a human pushes a button for each event to start. Central had alreadyattempted startup of the two generators in fwd eng, by auto initiate mode. Failed starts, due to ? (I never found out, but suspect they didn't re-align air from bleed to hi press & all the hi press air went out the header to offline engines) . Air flasks are now empty for those 2 units. They call down on sound pwrd phone for me to conduct a manual start on #3 generator. If we screw this one up, we have to request another ship come in from outer harbor anchorage and provide us hi press air. An embarrassing prospect for the Captain and eng officer. This is a brand new ship, right off shakedown & reftra on it's first deployment. Here's the sequence for starting a gas turbine. 1. Air 'on' for spinning the compressor section- 2. At a specific rpm, 'ignitors on'. 3. Fuel 'on'. I don't have to tell you what happens if you turn the fuel on first, and let the hot section fill up with fuel before turning on the ignitors. A hot start. Kaboom!!! There's a 2 second delay built in to the 'fuel on' sequence, to give you a slight chance to correct your mistake. It's not like a jet plane engine, where the explosion can go out the back. It has to travel up several decks to get out the exhaust stack. The engine is also coupled to a generator, so that's a big load of torque to sudenly transmit thru the flex coupling. Just not a pretty image to consider. Turbine blades are potential shrapnel.
About the time I get ready to start the generator, Chief shows up from central and announces he is going to do the manual start himself. That's fine, as I had only done it a few times on a sim at Great Lakes. You're watching rpms, air pressure, and a 1/2 dozen other indicators, all at the same time, in order to time the start events. I'm standing there watching the Chief do his thang. Chief hits start air. Nothing happens. Central forgot to shift control to us. Control now shifted, chief hits start air again. Nothing happens. wtf? We're getting worried, central is screaming, wanting power NOW! Solenoids on the bottles had failed to open for some reason. I send an FA over to manually open the air flasks on Chief's signal, & the turbine rpms start winding up. here we go. Then, at the specified % rpm, chief does nothing. Air pressure is dropping like a rock. Suddenly, with one move he hits 'fuel on' and immediately afterwards 'ign on'. SOB! Oh crap, we're all gonna die. My FA jumps behind the reduction gear of the mains. I'm thinking about joining him. Turbine is now dropping rpms due to low air pressure. Training kicks in, & I instinctively reached over the Chief's shoulder right quick and turned the fuel off, ignitors off, and then turned the ign on, and then fuel back on. 2 seconds had to be about gone. Chief looks at me like '"What th hell just happened here?" Turbine fires up, and fuel control computer now takes over. Shift control back to ECC for power distribution and power shedding decisions. # 3 & # 4 mains light off and we're hot. 10 minutes later, we're haze grey and underway. (Gotta luv gas turbines-no waiting around for steam while builds up) The Chief calls us all together over by the main control station, and tells us. "That didn't happen like that-did it?" No problem Chief. But, I followed him up the ladderway, out where it was quiet, and reminded him of something. "What you gonna do about the event log the computer generates, and the eng officer has to read & sign off on? You know they are going to scrutinize that log to find out what went wrong with the 2 failed auto initiate starts from central." Chief-"Opps! forgot about that one York. I'll take care of it"
Don't know what happened with it, as far as the Chief went, but I got an attaboy from the old man, so I guess the Chief told it like it really happened.
Sometime, I'll tell ya about the day that same jumpy FA (now a fireman-but not for long) tried to flood aft engineering-with us underway doing full power maneuvers, & the commodore and some vip's on board. What a charlie foxtrot that was. (Flank 3 is classified speed, all four 50,000 SHP engines at 100+%. The PF Flyer be steaming now boys-get out your skis!!)
[This message has been edited by maryjane (edited 02-13-2004).]
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09:00 AM
intlcutlass Member
Posts: 1431 From: Cleveland,Oh.44067 Registered: Nov 2002
OOOHH.. I've got a good sea story.. Uss-Dewert..Pack fire SM-1 missles off Puerto Rico...Just prior to my med cruise in 95-96. They line up about 4-5 ships in a end to end (they do this so that no 1 ship has to fire over another), and they start from the ship at the back (we were about in the middle of the pack). So the last guy fires first ..no problems, next.. well nobody knows what happened, but as the missle lifted off the rail, it proceeded to do an end over end, JUST missing the port bridge-wing of the FFG behind us by a matter of feet. Now 1/2 of the crew on my ship is on the helo pad watching this happen and we were close enough to the ship behind us that you could see the pale horrified look of it's crew as they narrowly escaped an explosion that would have killed many men. Then we realized, the explosion might have been gig enough to kill a couple of us as well. Let me tell you... you could have heard a mouse fart on that deck....
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12:02 PM
Sacred Member
Posts: 180 From: Midlothian, VA Registered: Mar 2002
I have noticed that is seems as if the PFF community has a decent share of military members. That being said, I thought it may be interesting to see who all is indeed in service. If you could just put it in a format similar to the following I could edit my post and make a list. But on the other hand, if this interests nobody, just let the thread die to the archives. (Any other info you want to add, feel free.)
Member Name- Service Branch(Duty Time), Rank (Job Title)
I guess I could start (if I count.)
What school do you goto and anh how long have you been in ROTC? I'm at VMI and doing NROTC(mainly because its mandatory).
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02:47 PM
Feb 25th, 2004
1MohrFiero Member
Posts: 4363 From: Paducah, Ky Registered: Apr 2003
Dont know if i actually count or not, but i was in the NJROTC for the two years it was offered while i was still in high school. the first year it was offered was when i was a Junior in HS, but i was one of the first to sign up for the first year even though i had to drive 17 miles everyday to get to class.
Bump ... was crusing and thought I would add my info ...
pherder________ Air Force(69-90)_________ Master Sergeant (E7)__________Ballistic Missile Analyst Technician
I pulled 784 alerts as a launch crew member of a Titan II (remember Gemini missions with two astronauts? Used the same missile).
One story I remember from the 1970s was being on alert @ ~ 2 AM and getting an Emergency War Order that basically told the officers to get the launch keys out of the red safe, put them in the launch consoles, harden the launch complex to protect it from nuclear attack and wait for the next message to launch the missile.
~ 10 minutes later we got the "nevermind!" message.
Longest 10 minutes of what I thought was the end ...
Missile system was deactivated in mid 1980s and I retrained as a computer programmer.
Paul Herder, MSgt, USAF, Retired. SAC Trained Killer
[This message has been edited by pherder (edited 06-14-2004).]
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04:52 PM
Jun 15th, 2004
tony78ta Member
Posts: 305 From: Yorktown, VA Registered: Apr 2001
Just found this thread, Army, retired at 20, SSG/E6, CH-47D Flight Engineer. 6 turning, 2 burning and 4 coming light! Hookers, you call,,, we haul. And as said by a certain command sergent major at an air show," Ch-47 Chinook, Everything else is just a sling load."
Just found this thread, Army, retired at 20, SSG/E6, CH-47D Flight Engineer. 6 turning, 2 burning and 4 coming light! Hookers, you call,,, we haul. And as said by a certain command sergent major at an air show," Ch-47 Chinook, Everything else is just a sling load."
YEAH!!
Another 67U
Chinooks do it with more thrust.
[This message has been edited by 84Bill (edited 06-18-2004).]
Unless it happens to be Afghanistan. I'm sold on Igor's stuff, but, I do happen to have a good pic of a Chinook hookload, if someone can post it for me.
alright i am feeling left out..............................fellow tankers.......................... The Fieromaster, what cav unit where you in and when?........remember the M60A3
79-84 11th Amored Cavalry Regiment, late 85 to 86 434th Field Artillery
M60A3 and 155 self propelled Howizter, talk to me about big bangs. BOOM and your deaf for hours ...........
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09:46 PM
PFF
System Bot
Jun 21st, 2004
sthtxfiero Member
Posts: 212 From: rockport texas Registered: Feb 2004
That brought a smile to my face, boy ain't that the truth !!! Wish I had a picture of my First Class Petty Officer, he even had the huge pot belly to go with the crooked coffee cup finger !!! His pose looked like a cartoon character!
[This message has been edited by California Kid (edited 06-21-2004).]
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12:58 AM
DR650SE Member
Posts: 1793 From: Cleveland, Oh Registered: Oct 2001
If that's a legitimate excuse to bump. 
GQ sounds. I'm off watch, but still up from standing watch in central control. I head for aft engineering. The Chief had just came aboard from liberty. Enhancing the local economy, one beer at a time, but he wasn't drunk, that I could tell. A good man all the time I worked for him. He stayed in the chiefs mess most of the time & left me & my crew of E-2's & E-3's alone. 
No problem Chief. But, I followed him up the ladderway, out where it was quiet, and reminded him of something. "What you gonna do about the event log the computer generates, and the eng officer has to read & sign off on? You know they are going to scrutinize that log to find out what went wrong with the 2 failed auto initiate starts from central." Chief-"Opps! forgot about that one York. I'll take care of it" 
