THE SCUTTLEBUTT
The Newsletter of the
USS Buchanan (DDG-14) Association
Fall, 2006
Nothing new to report on our upcoming reunion in February or March, 2008
in San Diego. Tim Nightingale is planning this one, as he has for our last two
reunions. There are two nice things about San Diego. The weather is always
nice (especially at that time of the year if you’re from the Northeast as I am)
and there is always a lot to do. A third great thing is that a lot of guys
retired to San Diego, so we hope to have a big turn out. As more information
is forthcoming, it will be published here in The Scuttlebutt. In the
mean time, you can always check the association’s website at http://us-sailors.com/Reunions/2008R.htm
.
TREASURER’S
REPORT
Submitted
by Dick Zimmermann
PAID MEMBERS (66)
Acosta, Javier; Alexander, Ted; Andrew, Randy; Backer,
Bill; Baile, Bruce; Bartleson, Don; Batterman, Bill; Beinke, Phil; Borg, Gene;
Boyle, Tim; Brinley, Bill; Browning, Rob & Marian; Boyle, Tim; Bussey,
Robert Cabahug, Jaime; Cadia, John; Casmier, Dave; Clark, Jere; Connell, Dan;
Crosser, Tom; Daisley, Dick; Doran, Paul; Egge, Dennis; England, Carl;
Falkenhan, Marc; Gant, Charlie; George, David; Gilbert, Joe; Glidewell, Mel;
Gloyd, Elmer; Gray, Bill; Heffernan, Michael; Henley, Ron; Hubner, Leon; Jones,
Bobby; Kane, Ken; Kern, Tom; King, Michael; Kupec, Cole; Larsen, Jerry; Looney,
Glenn; Malone, Dave; Marak, Ron; Martelly, Pete; Mezori, George; Myers, Dean;
Nightingale, Tim; Norrod, Michael; Parks, Bill; Probus, Ed; Proctor, Lou; Re,
Joe; Ridley, Ray; Rivenes, John; Rudisill, Terry; Sena, Pat; Sheridan, Tom;
Smeltzer, Steve; Snyder, Tom; Stroud, Mike; Taylor, Jim; Thacher, Phil; Walla,
Bob; Walsh, William; Wihera, Victor; Wood, Ken; Yarbrough, Dave; Zimmermann,
Dick
NEW MEMBERS SINCE SEPTEMBER 2006
Phil Thacher ST1 1971
- 73
Bobby Jones QM2 1961
- 64 Plankowner
John Rivenes LT 1970
- 73
Bill Gray EN2 1963
- 66
TREASURER’S REPORT
|
Balance 30 Sept 2006
|
$3,848.18
|
|
Dues
|
70.00
|
|
Ship store sales
|
19.56
|
|
Website renewal through 2011
|
-134.95
|
|
Balance
30 Nov 2006
|
$3,802.79
|
YAHOO
GROUPS CHAT GROUP USSBuchananLounge
For those who haven’t found
it yet, there is a chat group on Yahoo Groups called USSBuchananLounge. It’s a
place for Buchanan sailors to chat with each other en mass. You can either log
onto the site from time to time, or elect to receive and send messages via
e-mail. I use this second method as I find it the easiest to use. You can
send and receive messages, share and view pics, participate in polls, even post
events on a calendar is you wish.
In order to join the group,
you need to go to the site and request to join. Do that by going to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/USSBuchananLounge/
and then click on Join This Group! Then follow the prompts. I happen to be the
moderator and will admit you.
Try it! It’s a lot of fun.
QUIZ
Any sailor worth his salt
should pass this one. You’re a blue water sailor if you can get a perfect
score. If you score 5 or less, you’ve been out of the Navy way too long.
NOW ON THE
BUCHANAN...
Moments in
the life of USS Buchanan (DDG-14), taken from the ship’s annual reports.
Forty
years ago... 1966
In October 1966, Commander
Murray was relieved by Commander William A. Spencer as Commanding Officer.
Thirty
Five years ago…1971
Refresher Training began on
18 October with a Training Battle Problem. The rest of the week (19 October to
26 October) was spent inport making repairs on the Engineering plant. The ship was underway for addition exercises from 1
November until 9 December.
Thirty
years ago…1976
The period 18 September to
22 October saw the ship not only involved in extensive overhaul of its ship's
service turbine generators and main circulation pumps, but also involved in two
major inspections and a Food Service Assist Visit. The annual Disbursing
on-site audit was conducted 21-24 September. Buchanan added another feather to
its hat the following month when it successfully passed an exhaustive 3M
inspection conducted from 18-22 October. ER09 (or Repair Division) graded out
to have a 96% confidence factor with regard to planned maintenance system
accomplishment; all other major departments were assigned a phenomenal
confidence factor of 100%.
Twenty
Five years ago…1981
Arrival in Pearl Harbor,
Hawaii was on September 26. Buchanan departed Pearl Harbor in company with USS
Mars, USS Haleakala, USS O'Brien and USS Holt for MIDPAC OPS and
the transit to Subic Bay, Republic of the Philippines. The first WESTPAC upkeep
began on October 17 and continued through the 27th in Subic Bay. On the 28th,
"The Warship" prepared for sea and departed early October 29 for
Sattahip, Thailand. The second of November was spent refueling and preparing
for the up-coming week of exercises with the Royal Thai Navy.
Fifteen
years ago…1991
USS Buchanan (DDG 14) was decommissioned along with USS Robison (DDG 12) and USS
Lynde McCormick (DDG 8) at Pier Thirteen, Naval Station San Diego,
California on 1 October 1991 after twenty-nine years of outstanding service to
the United States Navy. Her final days ended in a historic ceremony
commemorating her on a job well done.
SEA STORY OF THE QUARTER
Dick Zimmermann, Chief Engineer, 1970 - 71
A Fire on Captain Thearle's First Day as CO?
For those of you who missed the thrills that came
with the 1200-pound steam plant, there was an auxiliary machinery cooling water
pump in each fireroom. As you might gather from its name, this pump provided
water to cool all the other pumps in the fireroom. There was an emergency valve
that could be opened if the cooling water pump broke down, which would then
send a backup supply of water from the firemain into the machinery cooling
system.
Toward the end of my tour as Chief Engineer, we had
a much-needed overhaul at Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard. Just before the
overhaul began, I had noticed that the emergency cooling water valve in the
after fireroom was obstructed in some way, so that opening it did nothing to
feed the cooling main. This was a critical shortcoming - with a 1200-pound
plant, you always wanted to make sure you had every backup system ready to go,
because you very often needed it.
I told one of my Chief BTs to make sure the clogged
valve was taken care of by ship's force during the overhaul. There was so much
major work required that getting valves done by the yardbirds was out of the
question.
One night toward the end of the overhaul, when all
the machinery was back aboard, I was inspecting my spaces. I checked to see if
this repair had been made, and could see that no water was getting through the
valve. I had a little talk with the Chief BT who was supposed to handle this
but let it slip his mind. Funny, he never once forgot to watch those Swedish
skin flicks they often showed in the Chiefs' Lounge, so I guess his memory
lapses were selective. After our talk, the Chief had the BTs on duty in the fireroom
isolate the valve, and pull it right on the spot.
But the line was leaking badly when they tried to
remove the valve because the other valves in the firemain were not holding well
enough to isolate that spot in the line. There were always lots of problems
with valves in salt water lines, because the salt water would eat right through
the valve seats and disks. We had several major work items more critical than
sea water valves, so we didn't get enough valve work done during the overhaul.
To get that emergency valve out of the line to look
at it and then to put it back in place, we had to get the firemain pressure off
the valve. We were getting shore-based firemain at the time, so that meant we
had to secure the firemain supply. This would leave the ship with no
firefighting water in the event of a fire. But securing the firemain was the
only way we could get the job done, and hopefully, it wouldn't take too long.
Our new CO, Commander Thearle, had just taken
command earlier that same day so we now were calling him Captain Thearle.
However, I remembered him best as Lieutenant Thearle from my days back at the
Naval Academy. It was there that he Class A'd both me and my roommate, Gil
Crouse, during our First Class year for selling sandwiches to hungry plebes in
Bancroft Hall when he was the Officer of the Watch. Even though the guys in '68
had a Plebe Year that fell far short of ours, they were sufficiently deprived
of food in the mess hall to make our sandwich-selling scheme quite lucrative
until Thearle put an abrupt end to it. But the sandwiches are another story.
The problem I was now faced with was figuring out
the following. If he had Class A'd me for the not-so-terrible offense of
selling sandwiches, what the hell would he do if, on the day he assumed command
of a guided missile destroyer, his new ship burned down to the keel because I
had secured the firemain and we couldn't fight a fire that started in that
vulnerable moment? I even rehearsed the possible ways to tell him, which all
started out with the lame words, "Captain Thearle, you probably won't
believe this, but ..." Everybody always dumped things into the XO's lap,
so I wasn't about to go that route. If a disaster resulted from my action, I
knew I would have to go straight to the new captain with the bad news. I
figured Thearle would then bring back the ancient practice of keelhauling using
a hydraulic windlass as a modern touch, or maybe he could come up with
something even worse.
Just for a moment, I considered leaving the problem
as it was, since I would be departing the ship in a few days, and I could let
my relief worry about it. But that didn't seem right - I had been through a lot
on this ship, having met many challenges, most of which we had overcome. I
wasn't about to wrap up this fantastic experience that I figured I would always
treasure, by leaving something knowingly undone.
It was with a great deal of caution that I very
nervously had the shore firemain supply secured so we could fix the emergency
valve. I stationed a man with sound-powered phones right next to the valve
topside where the firemain came aboard, and had another talker on the other end
right next to me in the after fireroom. Now to get all the water that was
already aboard in the firemain piping out of the system, we went ahead and
pulled the emergency cooling water valve, which let out all the residual water
right into our bilges. Even though it's now 2006 and this happened in 1971, I
can still see BT3 Ihrig perched atop a handrail loosening the bolts on the flanges
that held this valve in the line, and I can still see the sudden gush of water
when he got the valve out. As soon as the leftover water was drained from the
line, which only took a few seconds, the flow stopped.
The surge of water also seemed to clear whatever had
been lodged in the emergency line, so we put the valve back into the line and
turned the shore supply of firemain back on. We checked to make sure that the
emergency backup worked the way it was supposed to, and it did. Everything got
taken care of in just a few minutes, so Captain Thearle didn't have to hear
about his new command going up in flames on his first day, and I didn't have to
worry about what he would do to me after the fire.