Quote:
Originally Posted by dundonrl
I was stationed on the USS Essex LHD-2, we would do emergency crashbacks...now mind you, the Essex only had 70,000 hp vice 212,000 hp and was 90% the weight, and only had 2 shafts vice 4..
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ARRGGH! And I thought I wasn't going to have nightmares tonight.
You also had a bunch of 4-rail cargo weapons elevators that couldn't go faster than JOG when she got out of Ingalls. It took a lot of us at LBNSY to straighten those rails out. BOY, did they need straightening. Especially the outboard ones. As you looked down from the top deck, they looked like sidewinders.
I wound up with ingrown toenails walking those decks, climbing up and down those monkey bars of staging we had and glad that my retirement was coming up in a couple of months in February of 1994.
I had to totally redesign the bumper rollers and finally we got elevator number 5 to working. That was the elevator we used in San Diego for the ship's Christmas party where Santa Clause stepped out with the elevator loaded with gifts and two of the crewmen's wives acting as elves. I think we had over 200 kids there and I only had about 2 hours for all of them to sit on my lap. Remember me leading crewmen (INCLUDING the Captain in "12 Days of Christmas?").
Elevator 2 was worrisome as it was going up one of the inspectors noticed that the eyebolt for the lift cable was unscrewing itself. EMERGENCY STOP!.
Elevator 3 ramp would never hinge down flush because the dimples to go over the hinges were not deep enough. The shipfitterl didn't know how to press them deeper and loaded up the deck with angle iron, hydraulic jacks, etc. I told him to get me a Buttonset. "Huh?" he said.
"A four pound single-handed sledge hammer and your welder with a number 5 scarfing tip."
We cut out the reinforcing web under the dimple and heated the whole thing straw yellow. Then I took the 4 lb button set and "blacksmithed" a deeper dimple. then welded it back up. Did that to all four dimples.
It was fun. I started at the shipyard in 1954 swinging a sledgehammer as a shipfitter apprentice and I finished the year of 1993 with a sledgehammer as a Naval Architect.
My favorite tool.
Oh yeah, that superior accomplishment award of a few G's put a smile back on my face too.