On Tue, 13 May 2008 14:56:07 +0000, Larry wrote:

Bob wrote in news:d3842ec3-c5bb-402b-aa0c-df162a048cb3
:

Heard several stories bout Damage Controll School ove the
years............ The word "screaming" was in each of them..... Sounds
a bit hard core.

Nah, part of the fun. Nobody was that scared. If you did it at Great
Lakes in the cold months like I did it was when the Lake Michigan
water hit your balls that the screaming really began.
It's the real stuff that has you ****ing your pants, not the training.
The Forrestal guys were brave men, and many died.
Part of my HT training in '76 was watching Navy videotape of DC crews
on that ship approaching flight deck fires with 500 pounders in the
flames. Time after time a bomb would explode and a hose team would
just simply disappear. Soon another team would replace them.
Think there was a 10 minute sequence where 3 teams were blasted away
by one fire. A Chief was commanding each team.
They ran out of Chiefs.
Hull Technician replaced Damage Control as a rating in the early '70s.
On my regular Navy tour I was a BT (boilerman) and as the wrecker on
my GQ casualty team once was called to an electrical fire in the aft
steering space. That smoke was so stinking bad it closed up you lungs
and eyes right away. I was scared to death.
Luckily the DC men didn't need me. They just put on OBA's, yelled at
me to get out, jumped into the hole and struck the fire with CO2
bottles. Never put on my OBA.
(Did you get the OBA as grenade deomonstration?)
As an HT reserve it was nothing but training.

Unlike merchant seamen who can quit, Navy sailors don't have that option so
you can treat them as the slaves they truly are.

MY Navy was different than today. If you were to carry the garbage to the
dumpster on the pier, you either had to get into your dress uniform, ready
for inspection, or go through the paperwork motions and get a permission
slip signed by someone in authority to authorize you to walk onto the pier
in your dungarees the Navy was so ashamed of, because they actually WERE
slave's clothes.

Getting in your whites to take out the garbage was much easier.....

I was shocked at the "discipline" difference between my '64-68 tour
and when I went back aboard ships in the reserves '75-76.
Zumwalt probably had a lot to do with that, but the times and the
command also make a difference.
AFAIK it's a better Navy today. Smarter. And can you believe there's
females on ships!? Don't mean to sound like Wilbur, but I still just
can't fathom that. As the 17 year-old I was, that would have drove me
absolutely crazy. But as I said, they're probably smarter now.
Still, even now at 61, it just don't seem "natural" for a fighting
ship, and it would have my mind in the wrong places.

--Vic