Lincoln -- Time for a memoir entry: a 1962 Navy cruise from San Diego to Pearl Harbor and back. At the time, I was a midshipman third-class enrolled in the Naval ROTC training program at the University of Nebraska.
My orders were to report to the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk (CVA-63), along with third-class (rising sophomore) midshipmen from many other universities, public and private. We spent six weeks aboard ship that summer, basically learning what it was to be a sailor. We stood watches with the enlisted crew, both topside and below decks, night and day. We each had a small green book listing dozens of skills that we were to acquire, called "practical factors." As we learned each one, a member of the regular ship's crew signed off for us.
On the signal bridge, a practical factor might be mastery of flag identification and operation of the ship's flag bag. In the boiler rooms, a practical factor might be tracing steam lines. In "after steering," a compartment deep below and aft, it might be a successful shift of rudder control from the bridge and back, all coordinated by sound-powered telephone.
We observed flight operations close up. Our quarters were directly beneath the flight deck, so we heard landings and take-offs day and night. We heard a pilot come in too low one night and crash, fatally. We assisted in underway replenishments of destroyers and oilers that came alongside, helping with the lines.
In the lower photo below, the Fletcher-class destroyer USS Laws (DD 558) is in the process – note the red Bravo flag – of underway fuel replenishment from Kitty Hawk. USS Laws served in WWII and the Korean War. The destroyer was a part of Admiral Halsey's rush northward during the Battle of Leyte Gulf to confront a Japanese fleet whose purpose was to draw him and his carrier task force away from the battle. The Halsey mistake did not prove decisive in the battle, as a Japanese admiral made an even greater mistake by not taking advantage. Laws was decommissioned two years after this photo.
That summer of 1962 we tied up in Pearl Harbor alongside an oiler, across from Ford Island. From the pier we could see the USS Arizona memorial and the hulks of Oklahoma snd Utah, sunk on the Day of Infamy in 1941, twenty-one years earlier.
Several Nebraska NROTC classmates shared the naval training experience, among them Steve Creal, John Curran, and Gary Dillow. That's Dillow in the upper photo below, on the left, wearing the dungaree uniform issued to us for working at sea. Most of my cruise photos, unfortunately, were lost when I took them to the Miller & Paine photo shop in Lincoln, on 13th Street, later that year. I wanted copies made, but nothing ever came back from the developer. Miller's offered me a free roll of undeveloped film in compensation. Although many photos were lost, much of the training stuck with me and would be useful in later years.
Summer of '62: John F. Kennedy was president; the Yankees and the Giants would win pennants; the Pacific Ocean was peaceful; the Berlin Wall was one year old and had twenty-seven more years to stand before it fell.
