When I was in the squadron, my commanding officer asked me if I would like to be his Yeoman and fly to Bremerton, Washington to sail back on the carrier. I had never been on an aircraft carrier before, and my skipper knew he had shipboard experience, as most other Yeomans had none. He told me to pick another Yeoman who wanted to go with me, so I asked Debbie if she wanted to go too and she said, “Yes.”

We all had our things ready and on the plane. We took off from the ground, on a plane headed for Bremerton, Washington. As we were approaching the airport, we were told over the loudspeaker that this was going to be the first time a plane of this size had landed at the small private airport we were landing at. Suddenly, it seemed like everyone on the plane started wondering if we were going to crash when we landed or if we were going to go off the runway and hit something.

When the plane went down, there was a screeching noise immediately as they had tried to lock the brakes. We slid all the way down the track and reached the end. I guess we were lucky. There were already fire trucks, and ambulances, waiting there, in case something happened.

My commanding officer told me that the admiral was not aboard the carrier, and the chief of staff was not there either. Only the CO and XO of the carriers, and my skipper, were the most important men on board at the moment.

When we boarded the aircraft carrier, it was my first time on one, and I always wondered what they were like. The ship was so big when you walked up the gangway, across the deck and into the aircraft hangar section of the ship. Inside, it looks so gigantic that it feels like you’re in a large warehouse and not on a ship. The hangar bays, inside the belly of the ship, were huge, in size. It seemed to take forever to get from one place to another on the ship. It was about the size of a 10-story mall.

The first time we went out to sea, I heard the loudest sound, threw the ship, and could even feel the carrier move a little, it seemed. I thought, “What the hell was that?” We should just hit another ship, or a rock or something, I thought. It turned out it was the catapult, which is a long wire cable, which is like a rubber band, that they pull back and shoot the plane right off the flight deck of the carrier, at super fast speed, to get it. in the air fast and fast.

It’s the loudest thing you’ll ever hear, and it goes on almost constantly, while you’re on board the ship. The guys who run the carrier service, they’re some tough sailors, if you ask me. Give me a destroyer any day of the week. You can pretty much know all the guys, from department to department, on a destroyer, but an aircraft carrier, with over 5,000 people on it, is too big, if you ask me, but it’s amazing to watch things. in the operation.

It seemed like every time you had to do something, he was always on the other end of the boat. When you walk around the ship, you’re always walking, and every 20 feet or so, you have to lift your feet to get the airtight compartment doors thrown at you, even if it’s a long hallway, there will be plenty of doors. you are thrown, and every time you raise your legs, you also have to lower your head every time, so as not to hit your forehead with the hermetic doors. That’s what makes sinking a ship so hard to sink.

You can have 1,000 rooms, or compartments as they are called, and each door has a rubber seal and metal handles, called dogs, that you physically squeeze, when you want the room to be airtight and watertight. Now, if you were to close all the watertight doors on the ship, and most of them were to remain open during normal business hours, and nothing else happened, it would be very difficult to make it sink, even if part of the ship was submerged. flown

It would be very difficult to sink a ball, for example, if it were filled with hundreds of tiny air bubbles. So many air bubbles, that it would just keep it afloat, even if you ripped out the sides or bottom of the boat. Well, that’s what we all expected anyway.

Since my commanding officer was the highest ranking officer on board, he was also in charge of the other squads while on board. Debbie and I had a job to set up a message center to keep the boss informed of all the confidential and secret messages that were coming in, and to keep the messages organized. There really wasn’t much work to do while we were out at sea.

I read a lot, because waiting for a message from the radio can only come once every 30 minutes. And taking the message, when it arrived, and organizing it in a folder, was not that difficult. The boss wasn’t that busy either.

Debbie and I decided to split the workload, she could work during the day and I would work at night. She didn’t want to work during the day, because it would be more crowded with officers during the day and the night would be less hectic, and besides, since Debbie was a beautiful yeoman, no one was going to give her too much work to do. They didn’t have regular bedrooms for her, so they put her in the captain’s inside cabin, with a few other girls who were on board. At the time, aircraft carriers weren’t set up for ladies on board, so they wouldn’t really force her to do anything difficult, but I’m sure she was getting a lot of stares, with over 5,000 men on board and maybe 10 girls. .

While one of the afternoons that the boss was in the room, we were working, I told him how I had given my truck to this car lot, that they said they would take over your payments and your vehicle would be paid for. Well, just before I left for this trip, the bank called me and said that I hadn’t paid off my truck. I told them I sold the truck to a car lot, which makes the payments. They said they never got it and that I was still responsible.

I drove to where I thought my truck was up for sale again, in San Diego, and the business completely disappeared. I couldn’t believe it, I immediately had this bad feeling in my stomach. I walked and found a person in the building. I asked them, “What happened to the car lot?” He said they were 3 months behind on rent and moved out in the middle of the night.

My boss told me, “When we get back to San Diego, take some time off and take care of your truck.” He told me that when he was starting out, he had been hired on the first house he ever bought and that he could understand what he was going to pitch. He was a very nice captain and a great guy.

I finally found my truck, and the company I had given it to had sold it to another man, who was retired from the Navy. Lucky 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 He paid me every month, until the end of the payments, and then I gave the title to him. I was lucky that he was an honest guy.

In the office where we worked, we took two other officers with us. A female legal officer lieutenant, and another lieutenant commander, who was a man, and was also supposed to be gay, out of all the guys in the squad anyway. This guy was a weasel. The skinniest officer I had ever seen, and he talked like a lady.

Back then, you could smoke a cigarette, anywhere on the ship you wanted, and I was the only one in the office who smoked. The legal officer we brought with us was not well at all for most of the trip back to San Diego, so she wasn’t around much. She had the worst case of seasickness, so I guess she had never been in the sea before, on a boat.

The aircraft carrier has about 5,000 men, it was Hugh. I don’t think I ever wanted to be parked on a boat 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 couldn’t get to know most of those people. On the destroyer, which had about 300 people, that was nice, they called it the Cadillac of ships, because it was designed with enlisted soldiers in mind. She was even named after a member of the enlisted medical corps.

On the aircraft carrier, the ship was designated in three areas. Here was the regular area of ​​the ship, where all their stores, offices, warehouses, and just about everything else were, and it was open to everyone, to come and go as they pleased. Upstairs, a few more levels, it was called “Country of Officers”. This is where all the officers have their wardroom, staterooms, and pretty much work out of that area, if not in their departments, downstairs.

Enlistees weren’t supposed to go up there, unless you were away on business. Above the Country of Officers, there was a place called “Flag Country”, this was a part of the ship, only for the admiral, CO, XO, the admiral’s Chief of Staff and any other officers, the admiral wanted to stay there, while at sea.

My first two ships had Official’s Country, but I had never heard of Flag Country before, and even officers were not supposed to go into Flag Country.

When I was sitting in the message room we had set up one night, my squad boss was in the office and we were talking. He asked me if I wanted to see how the admiral lives, since he wasn’t on board, and my skipper, who was a full flight captain, was using the quarters of the chief of staff.

He took me there, and it’s very cool and comfortable, because of the air conditioning. He showed me his cabins, offices, bathrooms, lounge, kitchen and eating areas. Boy, if the engineering or operations guys on the flight deck could see how the admiral and all these other great guys live, they wouldn’t wonder why they like to go out to sea all the time.

It’s like something that Donald Trump would create for himself or something. The admiral’s dining table was about 25 feet long. It had a couple of nice long brown leather couches, a big screen TV, a big bed, a big bathroom, a full kitchen with a private chef, all courtesy of the Navy. Sure you could watch a war training movie on that big screen TV, but you could just as well watch any other type of movie, and I’m sure they did.

The admiral also had a nice helicopter that he had made for himself. It was more of a personal looking helicopter, inside, to me anyway. He had it all redone, with different fabrics, and he looked expensive. He would use it, to fly from ship to ship, when the battle party was out on 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 times of war. It looked like a helicopter limousine to me, but I’m sure the admiral earned it.