The Extended Range Procedure

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Occasionally, we stumble across a problem of great significance of which no one is aware.  That happened to me once and there is a little drama and a touch of humor in it.

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We were off the coast of Viet Nam on a summer day in 1967.  My ship, the Waddell, was providing gunfire support to troops ashore.  I was in the plotting room, in charge of the ship’s 5”/54 guns, its main battery.  We were in the midst of a mission.

Up in the Combat Information Center (CIC), the Gunnery Liaison Officer (GLO) informed me that the spotter, in a light plane a couple of miles inland, has just made an odd request and the GLO wanted to know if we could respond.  The spotter’s request was for us to “throw a couple of rounds as far down the gun target line as we could throw ‘em.”  It seems the spotter had a target he suspected was out of range but he wanted to make certain.  So, he asked for two rounds at maximum range along the same line we had just been shooting.

Maximum range, in a vacuum, is achieved at a gun elevation angle of 45 degrees.  I couldn’t do anything about not being in a vacuum; the atmospheric conditions were what they were and they had been entered into the computer and compensated for in its calculations of gun orders.  The more vexing problem was that, owing to the pitch and roll of the deck on which the guns were mounted, there was no way of manually setting the guns at that angle and keeping them there.  But the gulf waters were especially calm that day.  As I observed the dials indicating pitch and roll I could see that pitch (up and down) was not a factor and roll (side to side) was less than one degree.  At 45 degrees of elevation, it would take more than a degree of roll to shift the mean point of impact of any rounds fired by 100 yards.  Satisfied that accuracy would be acceptable, I removed the amplifier that controlled the gun elevation order module and hand set it to 45 degrees.  In short, I “jury-rigged” the computer controlling the gun mounts. I then reported ready to the GLO.

We fired one round then waited.  The spotter came back with a request for six rounds of rapid continuous fire; then six more behind that.  Suddenly, over the radio circuits, we heard him exclaim, “Hot damn! Secondaries!”  He was referring to secondary explosions caused by our gunfire.  It turns out we hit an ammo dump.  All with the gun elevation order manually set to 45 degrees.

Later, done for the day, we steamed off to a different assignment (with the amplifier reinserted in the gun fire control system computer, of course).  As we steamed off, I wondered just how far those rounds had gone, so I asked the GLO if he could back-track, checking the charts used up in CIC to see where we were at the time, where the coordinates for the target were, and what the distance was between them.  In a few minutes, he told me that the distance to the target we fired at and hit was just over 26,000 yards.  I was flabbergasted because that was 3,000 yards farther than those particular guns were supposed to be able to shoot and 6,000 yards farther than range the gun fire control system was designed to use.  The supposed maximum usable gun range of that system was just under 20,000 yards.

I spent the better part of the night poring over the manuals for that system, trying to figure out why we could shoot so much farther than the guns’ supposed maximum range.  Finally, as I sat looking at the range tables for the gun, I gave up.  I closed the range table book and, as I looked at the cover, the nature of the problem dawned on me.

The cover of the range table book indicated that the initial velocity (i.e., the speed of a projectile upon leaving the barrel of the gun) was 2,500 feet per second.  Well, that particular gun had an initial velocity of 2,650 feet per second.  The range tables were wrong!   And that meant the design of the gunfire control system was flawed.  So, I spent the better part of the following day calculating some crude adjustments to the range table values and converting those to a system of elevation spots that could be inserted into the computer to take advantage of the unused capability of our gun system.  We then spent several days blowing up things the enemy thought were safely out of reach.

Later, one night after I had worked out the extended range procedure and while we were still on the gun line, I was called to the bridge.  The skipper informed me that a sister ship (a ship of the same class) was having a problem and he wanted me to listen to the radio traffic.  It was a nighttime mission and it involved starshells (projectiles that served to illuminate targets).  The spotter would get the illumination right, then shift to high explosive rounds and they would be way off in relation to where they should have been.  I went below, checked the starshell range tables and found the same problem.  I quickly worked up a set of correcting spots, returned to the bridge and explained to the skipper what I had found.  We contacted our sister ship by voice radio, arranged for them to bring their Chief FT to their bridge and I explained to him in plain language over the airwaves what was going on.  The adjustments were being transmitted via different means.  Shortly thereafter, it was clear that the adjustments were working; the illumination projectiles and the high-explosive projectiles were both where they should have been.

I wrote up the “extended range procedure” as I called it and submitted it to the admiral in charge of the task group of which my ship was a part.

Later, when we left the gun line and returned to Subic Bay in the Philippines, the GLO and I were told to report to the admiral in charge of the task group.  He wanted to know what that radio traffic had been about.  We reported to the admiral’s ship and, just in case, I took along my copy of the extended range procedure.  After some brief pleasantries, the admiral asked the GLO what that radio traffic between us and our sister ship was about.  The GLO deferred to me and I explained the “glitch” in the weapons system.  I also mentioned that I had written it all up and submitted it to the admiral a couple of weeks earlier.  He looked puzzled, then reached for his intercom and called in a lieutenant on his staff.

“Jim,” said the admiral, “have you seen anything about an extended range procedure, something to do with a flaw in our 5”/54 gun system?”

“Yes, sir,” replied the lieutenant, “but I tossed it.  There’s no way there could be that kind of hole in one of our weapons systems.”

The admiral thanked the lieutenant who returned to his office.

Turning to me, the admiral said, “You’ll have to excuse him, Chief; he’s young.”

I allowed as how it was not a problem and gave the admiral my copy of the extended range procedure.  On an interim basis, that procedure was published in guidelines distributed to the task group.  Eventually, the gunfire control system in question was modified so as to take advantage of that extra 6,000 yards.

"I'd Like to Have You on My Ship, Chief"

Lessons Learned about How Change Does or Doesn't Happen

I’ll be 78 later this year and more than 60 years of that time has been spent in the workplace.  That gives me a lot to reflect on.  Quite a few of those years were spent as a trained, well-paid and (I like to think) “professional” change agent.  Much of my work as a change agent tied to surfacing, identifying, clarifying and making changes in and to organizations on management’s behalf.  (I’ve also opposed and resisted a change or two – as change agent and as change target.)

As I look back on the constellations of events that mark my life, I can see clearly some lessons to be learned.  Bear with me as I repeat and emphasize a portion of that statement:  Lessons to be learned.  In other words, lessons that could have been learned but weren’t necessarily learned – at least not at the time.  And so I’ve decided to cull back through my experiences, looking for situations where there were lessons to be learned and to convey them via short, anecdotal stories, coupled with some hindsight commentary.  So, let’s begin.

I first began working as a change agent while serving in the United States Navy.  I was a Chief Petty Officer, a weapons systems technician who had been trained as an internal organization development (OD) consultant and working at one of the Navy’s five Human Resources Management Centers.

By all accounts, I was quite good at this thing we in the Navy called “command development” instead of what civilians call “organization development.”  My apparent prowess led to me being assigned to work on some high-level issues.  In the course of one such effort, the Admiral for whom I was working at the time had me sit in on a meeting in which two Commanders, fresh from command at sea and new to our program, were being briefed on the program and introduced to some of their new colleagues.  Somewhere in the course of the session, one of the new Commanders, clearly puzzled by what he saw as unnecessary complications regarding the making of organizational changes, remarked that he didn’t see what all the fuss was about.  He indicated that all he had to do was put what he wanted in the ship’s Plan of the Day and his chiefs would see to it that what was supposed to happen happened. 

There ensued a brief lull in the conversation, broken when the Admiral turned to me and said, “Nick, is that how it works?”

As always, which is what I suspect the Admiral was counting on, I was direct to a fault.  I replied, “No, sir, not on any ship I’ve ever been on.”

“How does it work, Nick?” asked the Admiral.

“Well, sir, I get up before reveille, head for the Chief’s Mess, grab a cup of coffee and a copy of the Plan of the Day.  I sit down, sip my coffee, and read over the Plan of the Day.  If there’s something in there like what the Commander mentioned, I have to decide if I’m going to actively support it or simply go along with the program – or make it look like I’m going along with the program – or if I have to find some way of ducking the program or maybe even torpedoing it.”

There next ensued a lively conversation between me and the Commander who had claimed to see no problems with making changes.  At one point he leaned forward and said with what I took as a menacing smile, “I’d like to have you on my ship, Chief.”

Grinning back, I replied, “I’d like that, too, Commander, but I’ll bet you I’d have more fun than you would.”

At that point, the Admiral intervened and redirected the conversation.

Lessons to be Learned

A couple of obvious lessons to be learned from the preceding anecdote are that (1) I could probably stand to be a lot more tactful (some would add “respectful”) and (2) things don’t always work the way folks at the top think, hope or believe they do.

Another lesson to be learned is the importance of the view from the bottom; that is, what does a given change look like as it rolls downhill?  It is only from this latter perspective that the likelihood of adoption and cooperation as well as opposition can be determined.  It is one thing to lead change, it is quite another to enlist others in support of it.  Change must be managed up as well as down.

Perhaps the most important lesson to be learned is that successful change is marked by partnerships and collaborative relationships that run from the top to the bottom of the organization.  Absent these, only the illusion of change will occur.

"Chief of the Boat"

“Chief of the Boat”

An Offer I Hated to Refuse

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Every now and then something happens that boggles the mind.  This little incident certainly boggled my mind and it involved an offer that I absolutely hated to refuse.

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I was stationed at the Navy’s Human Resources Management Center in San Diego when we received a request from one of the Navy’s newest aircraft carriers bearing a famous name from WWII: the USS Enterprise.  The “Big E” was up in Alameda, having just completed a period in the shipyard there.  They were interested in doing a little Command Development work before they embarked the air wing.  (“Command Development” was the Navy’s term for Organization Development.) 

I don’t know who contacted us initially but whoever it was took pains to make it perfectly clear that the “Big E” had no race relations problems and we wouldn’t need to bring along a race relations specialist.  I was assigned to the team along with the Lieutenant Commander who was our resident guru regarding Command Development and couple of Commanders from our Command Development unit.  We flew up to Oakland with the aim of spending a week on board the Enterprise.

Our engagement with the carrier began with a meeting involving her Commanding Officer (C.O.), Executive Officer (X.O.) and all the department heads, most of whom were full Commanders.  The skipper was a Navy Captain, a “four-striper” and the X.O. was a full Commander.  The meeting centered on some to-be-expected concerns: embarkation of the air wings, an impending deployment to WESTPAC, morale, discipline rates – all the kinds of things you’d expect – but no race relations problems.  After the meeting broke up, the X.O. stayed behind and when the rest of the aircraft carrier’s officers were gone, he said, “I don’t care what they tell you, I’m telling you we’ve got some race relations problems on this ship.”  We didn’t have any race relations specialists on our team and I drew the assignment of working the race relations issue.

I asked the X.O. to provide me with some representatives of the various minority groups and to ensure they were credible with their shipmates.  I also asked him to make sure I got the most influential black enlisted man on the ship.  In that regard, the X.O. assigned a second-class petty officer, an aviation machinists’ mate named Miller.  (Later, the Skipper would confide in me that he sometimes wondered who really ran the ship, him or Miller.)  The rest of the group, all enlisted men, consisted of a couple of other black enlisted men, two Hispanics and a Filipino, a steward’s mate.

It took two days of some very gentle digging to get at what was going on.  The group started out with what I considered some legitimate albeit petty gripes (e.g., the ship’s store did not carry ‘Fro combs and there was no Ebony magazine in the crew’s lounge).  I viewed these as minor “nits,” easily remedied.  But they were also symptomatic of something deeper and perhaps darker.  About mid-afternoon on the second day, I said to the group (in very salty language that I cannot repeat here), “When are you guys going to quit putting me on?  I’m tired of listening to all this penny-ante stuff!”

Miller, the black petty officer, studied me for a few moments and then said, “Okay, Chief, let’s get to it.” He related a couple of incidents about how the E-9 (a master chief) in charge of the flight deck got his jollies beating up on young blacks, kicking them in the rear end, abusing them verbally, especially by using the “N” word and other derogatory terms.  He told me the reason the young black men on the carrier ran in gangs was because every time one of them was alone, he’d be beaten up.  The rest of the group chimed in with similar stories.  All in all, there were some nasty, brutal things going on and they seemed to be driven by a few Chief Petty Officers (CPOs).  We spent another day making up a laundry list of these kinds of incidents; names, dates and places.  Miller also brought up performance evaluations.  He claimed the black sailors, in particular, were really discriminated against.

I thought I had plenty of ammunition for a session with the C.O. and X.O. and I asked the group if they would be willing to share all that with the Skipper and the X.O.  They didn’t think I had a chance of getting the Skipper and X.O. to meet with them – but they agreed and I did.  I first briefed the X.O. and got him to prevail upon the Skipper to come down for a session on the fourth day of our visit to the carrier.

We assembled in the forward air wing wardroom, which wasn’t being used because the air wing hadn’t been embarked and, according to plan, I did the introductions and then turned things over to Miller, who was to review the serious incidents.  Instead, he started out reviewing the same list of penny-ante gripes that I had disposed of earlier.  He spent almost half an hour without getting to any of the serious incidents.  I could see that the Skipper was getting antsy and the X.O. was downright agitated.  They saw that list of items the same way I had – as “quick fix” kinds of things, easily disposed of.  And so I went way out on a limb…

I got to my feet and chastised the group of minority sailors with some more salty talk.  I accused them of not having the courage of their convictions, of wasting three days of my time, of hanging me out to dry with the Skipper and the X.O. and of blowing a great opportunity to set some things straight.  I concluded by saying that if they didn’t have to the guts to talk about what was really gnawing at them then as far as I was concerned, they deserved what was happening to them.  With that, I turned around and left the wardroom.

About two hours later, I went back to see what was happening.  The Skipper and the X.O. were still there and the entire group was tearing into the list of really crucial incidents.  Miller and the others were spelling it out in great detail.  I could see that the Skipper and the X.O. didn’t like what they’re hearing but I could also tell they believed it.  Indeed, except for the performance appraisal bias, the Skipper and X.O. were buying it all.  But they both thought they were doing a pretty good job of keeping bias out of the performance appraisal system.  Miller kept insisting and the Skipper and X.O. kept resisting, so I decided to clear the logjam.

I proposed a little study.  The Skipper asked, “What kind of study?”  I suggested that he and the X.O. identify a half dozen or so of the top performing black sailors on the ship.  The X.O. and I or whomever he might designate would then go down the ship’s office, randomly select a couple of hundred service records for white sailors as well as those for the half dozen black sailors and then “crunch the numbers” to see how they compared.  If there was any bias, we would surely be able to spot it.  The Skipper looked at me for a moment and then said, “There won’t be any need to do that, Chief.  I get the point.”  (The X.O., however, did do the study and the results bore out Miller’s version of what was going on.)

The next day, a Friday, our little Command Development team was wrapping things up and getting ready to fly back to San Diego.  Our lead Command Development specialist told me the Skipper wanted to see me in the same forward wardroom where we had met the day before.

I entered the forward wardroom and the Skipper was sitting at the same table where he’d sat the day before.  He motioned for me to join him.  I sat down and he held up thumb and forefinger so that they almost touched and said, “I want you to know that you came about this far from getting an unescorted tour of the inside of my brig.”  He went on, “But you did what you did deliberately, didn’t you?”  I said, “Yes, sir, it was a gamble on my part.”  He said, “I thought so,” and added, I’d like to have you on my ship, Chief.  We can do some great things here.”  He then made me an offer that was absolutely flabbergasting.  He asked, “How would you like to be the chief of my boat?”

I couldn’t believe my ears: Senior enlisted man on one of the biggest and best known aircraft carriers in the Navy.  At first, I protested.  I said, “But that’s a job for an E-9, a Master Chief, and I’m only an E-7.”

He laughed and pointed toward an old black Western Electric telephone on a table near the forward bulkhead of the wardroom.  “See that telephone?” he inquired.  I nodded and he continued, “I am the number one skipper of the number one ship in the number one Navy in the world.  If I want you here tomorrow morning as an E-9, all I have to do is pick up that phone, make one call, and it’s done.  Now what do you say?” 

I thought about it hard and fast and then told the Skipper that I was really honored and that it was a very tempting offer but I was planning on retiring in about a year and that I would have to extend my hitch by at least two years to take him up on his offer.  I had plans for trying to break into the consulting business in the private sector.  I also told him that I had genuine concerns about the possibility of disappearing over the side the first time we put out to sea.  He said he understood and we parted company.  I told the rest of my team what had transpired and asked them if the Skipper could really do what he said.  One of the Commanders told me that such promotions were called “frocking” when done for officers and presumably, if they could do it for officers, they could do it for an enlisted man.

As our team was leaving the carrier that day, Miller came up to me on the quarterdeck and told me something that was every bit as important as the skipper’s offer to be chief of the boat.  Miller said there had been a meeting of all the “front men” and all the “back men” and the gangs had agreed to cool things until they could determine if the Skipper was serious about changing things.  He was and he did.  Miller told me something else that was important, too.  He said, “I’ve never met a white man like you, Chief.”  I took that as a compliment.

I have wondered more than once since then how my life and career might have turned out differently if I had accepted the Skipper’s offer to be the Chief of the Boat on “the number one ship in the number one Navy in the world.”  On his part, the Skipper fared well.  He went on to become a vice admiral and COMNAVAIRLANT (commander of all naval air forces in the Atlantic).  Had he not died an unfortunate premature death, he might even have become CNO and that would have been a good thing for the Navy.

Oh yes, and what of the operational issues that brought us to the aircraft carrier in the first place?  Well, a good deal of time and energy went into planning the embarkation of the air wing.  That planning effort was very thorough and very collaborative.  It was designed and facilitated by our Command Development specialists working with representatives of the Enterprise and the air wing.  The air wing was embarked without a single hitch or glitch and I was told that was the first time this had ever happened.  It was a job well done.

A Footnote:  I know that the term "Chief of the Boat" is ordinarily used on board submarines, not surface vessels, but the Skipper of the Big E used it with me and I knew exactly what he meant.

"Have 'em put their names on it"

A Sea Story about the Nature of Recognition

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This little incident illustrates for me the true nature of recognition. It’s not so much a matter of providing praise or rewards or awards but more a matter of letting someone’s contributions to the organization be known and recognized as such. In this case, it was simply a matter of letting “pride of authorship” take its natural course.

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One of my assignments was as head of the Navy’s Programmed Instruction Writers course, a unit of the Navy Instructor School at the Service School Command (SSC). SSC was in turn part of the Naval Training Center (NTC) out on Rosecrans Avenue in San Diego, California. During my tour there I redesigned the PI Writers course. Instead of the participants being taught how to develop PI materials they were taught how to evaluate them. The premise was that if they could correctly evaluate such materials they could produce them too. The assumption proved valid; the trainees were in fact able to evaluate and thus produce high-quality PI materials. A few years later I learned that I had made the right decision on the wrong theoretical basis. My assumption at the time of the rewrite of the PI course was based on Bloom’s Taxonomy of the cognitive domain which held that the then highest level, evaluation, subsumed all other levels. What I later learned is that the theory that accounts for the success of the rewrite is in fact Perceptual Control Theory (PCT). Anyway, that’s another story and I digress. Back to this little sea story.

My next tour of duty was at the Navy’s Human Resources Management Project (HRMP). It was located right down the street from the Instructor School. My C.O. at the HRMP, a four-striper by the name of Gerry Bradford, was reassigned as the C.O. of the Service School Command. A while after he took command of SSC I got a call asking me to report to his office. When I showed up we exchanged some pleasantries and then got down to business.

He told me he remembered that I had headed up the PI Writers course and he wanted to ask my advice about a related matter. He said it had come to his attention that the PI Materials being produced at the various schools which were part of SSC were of less than sterling quality. He came straight to the point: He wanted to know what could be done about it.

As it happened, I was aware of the problem, too. And I thought I knew the reason behind it. At any rate, here’s the advice I gave my former Skipper.

“Skipper,” I said, “I know about that problem and I think I know what’s behind it. When I was running the PI Writers course, we made sure the developers put their names on the materials they developed. We also made sure they put their names front and center on the cover page. What I understand to be the case now is that they are forbidden from putting their names on the materials. As a result no one knows who developed the materials and the people who develop them probably don’t care near as much as they would if their names were on them.”

“So what would you have me do?” asked my former Skipper.

“Have ‘em put their names on the materials, right on the cover page,” I replied. “Restore their pride of authorship.”

“Thanks, Nick,” said Captain Bradford. With that we shook hands and I returned to the HRMP.


Epilogue

A few months later I heard that the developers’ names were in fact being put on the materials, in a prominent place although not on the front cover. I also heard that the quality of the materials being developed had improved considerably. I also learned that Captain Bradford considered the problem solved.

"Gaming the System"

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Organizations have been described as “playgrounds for adults.”  To me this has always meant two things:  First, the members of an organization can be regularly found playing games with the confines of the rules of the systems in which they operate and, second, those same members have a marked tendency to “game” or manipulate the systems in which they find themselves.  Thus, while it is true that an organization’s culture shapes, restrains and constrains the behavior and actions of its members, savvy members of the organization can also “play” that culture to their advantage. The following story illustrates both points.

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There are times when getting the job done calls on all the resourcefulness, ingenuity, and just plain nerve and B.S. you can muster.  The time I "cannibalized" the Henry B. Wilson's fire control radar offers a good example.

My ship, the Waddell, was getting ready to deploy to WestPac[1].  It was Sunday night, our radar was on the fritz, and we were headed out to sea the next morning. 

We had traced the problem to the high-voltage box, a notoriously unreliable component in an otherwise pretty reliable radar, but we didn't carry a spare and the supply depot at the Long Beach Naval Station where we were tied up didn't have one either.  Nor could they get one shipped to us in time.  One could be waiting for us in Pearl Harbor when we arrived but, in the mean­time, the Waddell would be without its radar and, therefore, its main battery of 5" guns would be out of commission.  That's no way for a ship of the line to put to sea.

Down the pier was the Henry B. Wilson, a ship just like ours, with a radar just like ours.

Along about 2000 hours (8:00 p.m.), I've figured out what I'm going to do.  I told one of my FT's, a kid from Providence by the name of Frank, to meet me on the quarterdeck at 2315 (11:15 p.m.).  In preparation, we carry the high voltage box from our radar down to the quarterdeck and stash it on the off side.

At 2315 sharp, Frank and I are on the quarterdeck.

"What are we gonna do?" he asks.

"It's better that you don't know,” I said.  “Just play dumb."

Frank and I picked up the high voltage box and headed down the brow to the pier.  The high-voltage box is quite heavy and, because it's also quite compact, it's difficult for two men to carry.  We made our way slowly down to the end of the pier where the Wilson was tied up.  We carried it up their brow at 2330 on the button.

The OOD on the Wilson is a first-class petty officer, a Quartermaster.

I introduced myself.  "My name is Chief Nickols, off the Waddell down the pier.  My weapons officer and your weapons officer made a deal to swap high-voltage boxes out of our radars.  We're going to WestPac in the morning and can't wait for a new one to come in.  Would you have your messenger escort us up to the director so we can do the swap?"

Frank and I immediately started moving forward up the main deck.

"Oh yeah," I said, turning back toward the quarterdeck, "you guys are about to be relieved, so would you tell your reliefs that we're on board and that we'll be comin' back down in about half an hour?"

The Quartermaster, still not sure what to do, but perfectly willing to let his relief have the final responsibility, nodded and motioned for his messenger to escort us.

Once we were in the barbette, the equipment room underneath the fire control direc­tor, I played my next card.

"Look," I said to the messenger, I know you want to hit the rack, so why don't you go back down to the quarterdeck and send your relief up here?"

Anxious to hit the rack, and doubtless appreciating my thoughtful consideration, he did as I suggested.  A few minutes before midnight, the new messenger shows up.

At about 0015, we had the Wilson's high voltage box out of its cabinet.  Ours was sitting on the deck; no point in putting it in.  The new messenger escorted us back down to the quarter­deck.

Grinning at the new OOD, a Chief Radar­man, I said, "Chief, would you get all upset if I didn't salute your quarterdeck on the way off.  This damn thing weighs a ton and I don't wanna put it down and pick it back up unless I have to."

"No sweat, Chief," he says, and motions us off.

On the way down the brow, I turn back and said, "I know you're gonna sleep late in the morning, but when you get up would you tell your Chief Fire Controlman that I said thanks for the loan of the high voltage box?"

"Sure thing," he said, giving me a very snappy salute.

The next morning, promptly at 0800, we slip our lines and pull away from the pier, headed for Pearl Harbor and points west.  Our fire control radar is back in operation.  I'm up on deck, just in case.

As the last line is cast loose, I see two men in khaki running down the pier from the direction of the Wilson – a Chief and an officer.  It didn't take a genius to figure out who they were.

They stood on the pier where we had been moored and even from a distance I could tell they were considerably agitated.  Finally, the Chief flips the finger in our general direction and they head back down the pier toward the Wilson.

I went up to the bridge to wait for my weapons officer to be relieved from his duties as OOD for the special sea and anchor detail.  I needed to tell him why his main battery was back in operation and help him figure out how to deal with the skipper, the X.O., and the message traffic that ought to be coming in any minute now.

Back on the Wilson, in an envelope taped to the useless high-voltage box we’d left behind, was a note from me to the Chief FT on board the Wilson.  It read as follows:

Dear Shorty,

Do you remember the time you guys came over and cannibalized the time unit out of my computer and left the covers off and a bunch of other stuff scattered all over the plotting room? 

Well, I've finally decided to forgive you.

See you in WestPac – if you guys are ever able to get that hunk of tin underway.  Best of luck,

---

[1] Western Pacific

Sex and the Single Sailor

A Deal I Was Stupid Enough to Refuse

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I’ve never been much of what you’d call a “ladies man.”  This little story will make that abundantly clear. It also illustrates how opportunities can pass us by never to return.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

It was the spring of 1958.  I had turned 20 the previous October.  I had taken 30 days leave and was headed home to Iowa.  I was long on time and short on cash so I was hitch-hiking.

I'd gotten as far as Riverside, California when my luck turned bad.  I'd been there about two hours, trying to catch a ride east.  No luck.  Even worse luck: it was raining and it was dark, about 8 o’clock at night.

I'm drenched, wondering if I'm ever going to get out of there, when this baby-blue 1957 Chevy Bel Air goes screaming by. 

Zoom!  Whoosh!  Splash!  Screech!  The driver slams on the brakes and starts backing up.  I grab my bag and start running for the car.

I hop in, throw my bag in the back seat and take a gander at who just picked me up.  It's a young woman in her mid-twenties, a good-looking brunette with a hint of plumpness but far from being overweight.

 

We engage in some idle conversation – you know, who I am, who she is, where I'm head­ed, where she's headed – that that sort of thing.  It turns out she's an English teacher, on her way up to Portland and then on to Seattle for her spring break.

I'm struck by a change in her use of language during the course of our conversation.  At first, she's all prim and proper.  Pretty soon, she says, "Damn."  Then it's "goddamn."  Next, in quick succession, it's "hell," "s--t" and then the “F” word.

Darned if she doesn't proposition me.

"Look," she says, "would you like to come along to Seattle with me?"

"That's nice of you,” I replied, “but I don't have any civilian clothes, just the uniform I'm wearing and a spare one in my bag."

"I'll buy you all the clothes you need.  I've got close to $4,000 in travelers checks."

"I couldn't let you do that,” I said.  “Besides, I really do want to get home to Iowa."

"That's no problem,” she declared.  “I've only got 10 days and you've got 30.  You come along with me for those 10 days and I'll buy you a round-trip train ticket home and back out to San Diego."

I was too young to know that “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” and I said, "Naw, I really do wanna get home and see my mother."

She pulls over, stops and tells me to get out.  I grab my bag and get out.

The tires on that baby-blue Bel Air screech again; this time from digging out instead of stopping.

I manage to get home in a couple of days, spend my leave and then get back to the ship.  I go down to the mess decks at lunchtime, grab a tray full of chow and sit down at a table with some guys I hung around with.  One of them was Tommy Lee Crabtree.

I told them about the English teacher.  Tommy Lee looks at me, stands up, picks up his tray, looks down at me and says, "You have got to be the dumbest son-of-a-bitch alive."

Now, a little more than 50 years later, I'm inclined to agree with him.  I wish somebody would invent a time machine so I could go back and try that one over again.