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The 70's

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Operational History

1971 Cruise Book

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Click on book to view crew pictures

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Hullgrams

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  Hullgrams compliments of  shipmate Gary Line BM3 '70-'74

For service during 22 Apr to 29 Oct 1972, Hull is awarded the Meritorious Unit Citation

Rescue of tug Marpole crew (click to view)

Organizational Chart (Dated 26 Oct 72) - Compliments of Steve Livingston FTG3

Mark 71 8"-55 Major Caliber Light Weight Gun (MCLWG)

This was an attempt to produce a gun capable of supporting amphibious landings. This gun was intended for the Spruance destroyers and the Ticonderoga Aegis cruisers. Originally planned to be an adaptation of the Army's 17.5 cm (6.9") but the 8" (20.3 cm) caliber was selected during the initial evaluation testing in the early 1970's. This gun would have combined a large explosive charge with long range and high accuracy through laser guidance. Although the prototype was successful, the program was cancelled as a result of budget considerations during the defense cutbacks of the late 1970's.

The gun barrel for the Mark 71 was the Mark 28 Mod 1, a 55 caliber two piece loose liner barrel. The production gun mount was to have used a one piece monobloc barrel designated the Mark 32. The chamber of this weapon was designed to be able to handle a 10-11 caliber projectile. One of the proposed munitions was an extended range guided round that would have been around 90 inches (229 cm) long.

As the U.S. Navy's test ship for this weapon from 1975 to 1979,  USS Hull was the only destroyer ever to mount an 8" (20.3 cm) cannon. The mount was removed from the USS Hull in 1979 and is now at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Virginia.

For more information about the 8" gun visit: www.navweaps.com

Crew Stories and Accounts

A couple stories by Doug Hisey MM2 '71 -'74

During my tenure on Hull we engineers managed to avoid going truly dead in the water (DIW) …except for just once. To be sure we had a couple of near-misses and over the course of two WESPAC’s and countless ‘local ops’ we dropped the load in either the forward or after plants, but we only lost it ALL once (along side the pier and at anchor in Hong Kong not-withstanding).

January 1973: Hull had dropped the In Service Inspection party at Ballast Point and was ‘putzing’ overnight at low speed off the Coronado Strand. The propulsion plant was cross-connected steaming on only one boiler in forward fireroom. Through a series of seemingly unrelated events and miscommunications we had been losing ground on our feedwater reserves for several hours (not all that unusual in and of itself – the 1200 lb. boilers liked water almost as much as they liked fuel). Things went from ‘concern’ to ‘crises’ just after eight PM (the movie was playing on the mess decks) when condensate flow to the forward fireroom deaerator ceased for all intents. For non-engineers in the audience, condensate is water returned to the boiler(s) from the propulsion and generator turbines to replace the water the left the boiler as steam to power the turbines in the first place. If you can’t put water in the boilers you can’t make steam and the ‘fires’ must be pulled to avoid damaging the boiler.

Over the course of a somewhat chaotic 30 minutes or so and in-spite of the best efforts of all engineers in the three steaming spaces – all available reserve feedwater in the forward plant was exhausted and the forward deaerator went ‘out-of-sight-low!’ … the booster and feedwater pumps tripped and the BT’s had no choice but to ‘pull-fires’ when water went ‘out-of-sight-low!’ in the boiler a few moments later. It took about a minute for everything to wind down, punctuated by the battle-lanterns finally energizing and the strange lack of the rotating machinery noise that emanates from every part of a warship underway. It took about five minutes for Hull to be turned broadside by the swell and begin to take rolls. Hull was truly dead in the water. We were only a few miles off the coast and unless we recovered quickly it would be embarrassing at the least.

As we investigated, identified and corrected the ‘errors’ that caused the diversion of condensate from the forward fireroom, the Engineman fired up the mighty ‘Hercules’ emergency diesels. Bringing the Hull back to life with only an emergency diesel providing very limited power to the fire and engine rooms is very tricky and requires very careful management of the limited available power. Because we had lost so much feedwater it was likely that we would get only one chance to raise pressure in a boiler, bring steam turbine generators on-line and then bring the engines on-line and avoid the embarrassment of calling for a tug, worse yet being pushed onto the beach by the swell.

Both diesel engines were operating but Hull’s original 100kW diesels could not be paralleled (output combined). Captain Quast and the Engineer Snyder determined that the forward diesel would supply power to the bridge, ops and radio, and that the after fire and engine rooms would light off from cold-iron on power from the after diesel. It was rumored that the Captain had given the Engineer one hour to restore power and propulsion – if we didn’t make it he would call for assistance. This would not be a good thing at any time, but to happen during an INSERV inspection would not be ‘career enhancing’ (we were scheduled to pick up the inspection team from Ballast Point at 0700).

We transferred much of what little precious feedwater we had to the aft fireroom and we prepared to ‘black-start’ the ship. Firing up Hull’s 1200 lb. boilers from cold took very good timing and the right touch even with ‘unlimited’ shore power available. Lighting off and bringing on line both the fire and engine rooms using less than 100kW total was extremely challenging. The absolute minimum of equipment had to be used and the large motors started before too much load was on the diesel because of the ‘inrush’ load. On paper we needed about 65kW minimum. The Hercules diesels, rated at 100kW, were more realistically only good for 80-90kW on a good day. There was very little margin for error.

Once the fires were lit in the boiler, it took about ½ hour to raise boiler pressure from 100 lbs. to >400 lbs. and during that transition period there is no way to add water to the boiler and no steam is available to operate equipment. There was not enough power for ventilation of course and in this time frame there was little to do but wait and prepare to bring a turbine-generator on line as fast as possible as soon as the main feedwater pump was on-line and the boiler stabilized. If the diesel went down we would be screwed and might not have enough feedwater to try again. Fortunately everything came together and we had a turbine-generator back on line within about 45 minutes and the aft engines available about 10 minutes later. At the one hour deadline Hull had limited way and steerage on one engine, forward engineroom was coming on line with a second turbine-generator and pulling vacuum on the forward engine.

We avoided the ultimate humiliation of having to go under tow and learned that it really was possible to black start the plant with only the diesels. We got an atta-boy for performing a recovery that many ships had failed – sometimes I guess a screw-up can provide an opportunity to show how squared-away a group is. Even the INSERV team later told us that it was unusual for a ‘Sherman’ class to recover from DIW on the first try.

I recall that at just before 2100 when the ship was illuminated only with battle lanterns, John Lee was summoned to the bridge to his ‘Captains 1JV talker’ during the casualty. As he left the engineroom we told him that he didn’t have a hair in his ass if he didn’t report ‘cold-iron all secure’ to the OOD” when he got to the bridge. Knowing John I’m sure he probably did.

How about the fall of ’73 in Subic when we were moored inboard of the USS Beaufort!

There was the morning that we were doing gun mount T-Checks …. Mount 52 somehow had been ‘rewired’ 180 degrees out of phase and when the control was shifted from local to remote the gun swung (rapidly) from 180 to 0 relative. The very large waterproof locker that had been mounted directly forward of mount 52 got in the way of the gun barrel and the home-run swing turned the locker into a line-drive from the 01 level to the starboard side main deck of the Beaufort … witnesses on the port side of Hull commented that the 01 level life lines didn’t even slow it down. Nobody hurt.

Then there was the oil fire on the water between the two ships started by welding slag from the ongoing hull repairs on the Beaufort. Amazing how big those flames were, at one point licking the torpedo tubes on the 01 level. About the time the flames were getting under control thanks to the response of the GEIP parties of both ships, Hull’s ASW Officer showed up on the main deck and announced that there were “war shots” in the torpedo tubes! All hands on deck not directly fighting the fire performed a similar migration to the ends of both ships. I remember being very impressed by how effective the big fog nozzles were on the oil fire and how thankful I was that that was the case. Other than some scorch marks neither ship suffered any serious damage or injuries from the fire.


Hisey MM2

USS Hull DD-945  71-74

The crack in the deck of Mt 51's powder magazine

Another "sea" (ok... in port) story.
During West Pac '81, Hull was in Subic (Once again) She had developed a crack in the deck of Mt 51's powder mag (as I recall) and the fuel bunker directly below. Needless to say, we had fuel oil in the mag. After off loading the entire magazine, draining the entire bunker & cleaning it all out, the crack had to be welded. During this process, a fire started in some insulation and the ship's 1-mc sounded the fire alarm for a fire in the forward magazine. There was a mass migration of bodies aft. I never knew the fantail could hold so many people.

Clifton Grassly

2nd Div
U.S.S. Hull DD-945
'79 - '82

Does anybody remember the "dropped" 3" 50cal projectile during rearming at sea off the coast of Viet-Nam during the 1970 WestPac cruise? It was dropped by an ammo handler (young seaman as I remember) from the starboard side of Mount 52 onto the main deck where the ammo was coming aboard. Talk about puckered assholes!!!! I do not remember the name of the guy who picked it up and VERY gently dropped it over the side without further incident, but the dent the nose of the projectile left in the main deck was about 3/8th of an inch deep. (You could actually see the slot in the end and the exact shape of the pointy end of the round in the deck, even after it was repainted) After about a minute (which seemed an hour or so at the time), you could hear everyone begin to breathe with a deep intake of air. For a moment in time, everything went into slow motion and you could only hear the sound of the sea rushing past followed by many of us suddenly finding prayers of thanks being said by all who witnessed the incident. Another incident that I wonder if anybody remembers is when we had to put divers over the side to insure that we had not snagged a mine cable that had been stretched between two junks that attempted to pass to each side of us as we were steaming offshore on the "gunline." The junks were reduced to kindling along with their crew by the 3" 50, but the Captain wanted to be sure they had not fouled our screws or rudder with the mine cable. I remember the incident rather well, since I was one of the divers that went over the side and had to check the underside of the hull to visually be certain that we were free and clear. When I think back on this I remember just how scared I was, not only of the destructive possibilities from the concussive force the mine could present, but my fear of "sea snakes" which nobody ever told me that have to actually bite and chew to inject their venom through very short fangs. I was wearing a wet-suit that was over 3/8ths thick and sweating in the 85 to 90 degree water. Talk about dumb and young - the two do go together rather well.

Eric Kapocius EM2 (SS) '70 - '71

Anecdotal Stories  (Caution - Usually told through the fog of time, perhaps a beer or two, and sometimes graciously embellished) Please, no tales intended to humiliate.

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