Cruisers - how are they different from battleships?

[desertswo]

Of course this string has strayed, they all do when I participate.....

I'd use hearing plugs and then the aural protectors if it was really loud. Like working forward on a Leahy or Belknap in the emergency forward gas turbine generator space with the Equipment Cleaners operating the heavy deck grinders right above us taking off the non skid. I stood on the aft Tomahawk deck and watched the New Jersey test fire it's aft 16" guns. Didn't seem that loud, but the concussion would raise the collar of my jacket each shot. Few times I worked in a ship at the water line or below and there would be a ship at the SAC site pinging sonar. Ear plugs never helped then. I can remember being home all weekend "Hearing" the pinging sequences.

Did you know Admiral Prout III well? He was the only admiral I almost met. I was working on the John Young (I think) on a Sunday when I heard "USS Carl Vinson Battlegroup, arriving." I just knew that meant admiral, but since I was in #1MMR putting insulation pads on the waste heat boiler I figured I'd avoid him. After a while I look up and there's the admiral standing there watching me work. He gave me a big friendly smile and walked away without saying a word. It was only a few days later he was in the plane crash. Later that week a co-worker pointed out the flag on the fantail flying at half staff. We had no idea why the flag was that way. I couldn't find any information until a couple of months later when I received the "Proceedings" magazine. I remember he was wearing a pair of those (I considered) ugly bluish gray coveralls that I'd seen a lot of you PEB people wear. :)

I never knew the Admiral but I do recall when that happened. He had the reputation of being a good guy. Not like some others who made it to one star. It's funny, but some of the biggest a-holes make it that far and then someone figures out that, as we say in the higher echelons, "mistakes were made." LOL!!! I could name names but I'll just leave it at that. Anyway, he was one of the good ones.

I worked for and with some really great flag and general officers on the Joint Staff. Started with "the big guy" at the top. General Hugh Shelton, USA, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was 6'6" and all angles. Ranger Ready to the day he retired. Probably still is. He was an oddity because he had been in Special Warfare pretty much his entire career. Those sorts of people usually don't make it that far because they are just a little too "special." He was the exception, and a real prince among men. I never heard a cross word out of his mouth, even when John McCain gave him a dressing down when the General had gone before the Senate Armed Services committee in 1999 to tell them the force was broken and people were voting with their feet because of the so called REDUX retirement system the Congress had foisted on the All Volunteer Force in 1986. McCain didn't like hearing that he'd screwed up. The General took it like a man and never showed anger, but you just knew he could have popped McCain's head like a ripe zit. When he got back, my boss, an Air Force three-star, and another prince among men, told us that General Shelton needed cheering up; so we genned up a slide show about his performance in front of the committee, that was linked to a Billy Connolly stand-up routine in which every other word was an f-bomb, and put it on a disk, which my General took up to the boss. I guess he damn near pee'd his pants laughing, and he sent down personal thank you notes to all of us. Now that is a leader!