Monday January 10, 2005 – First Day Aboard USNS Michelson

Monday January 10, 2005 – First Day Aboard USNS Michelson

When I finally reported for duty on board the USNS Michelson, I was relieved to be finally settled where I would remain until my tour of duty was over. My living quarters were spacious by comparison with those of sailors aboard a destroyer or any other ship in the Navy, where space is a premium; my stateroom was the accommodations an officer might expect aboard a Navy ship. I shared the room with two others, third-class petty officer A and Seaman (the grade below third-class petty officer) T. We each had a double-door deck-to-overhead metal wardrobe sufficiently spacious to accommodate a week’s worth of clothes on hangers and shoes.

The room had four bunks, two to your immediate left as you entered the room—I took the top one of these two, as I liked sleeping high off the ground. The other two bunks were on the bulkhead opposite the door. Beneath each bunk were three drawers. The lower bunks the drawers pulled out to reveal an open space beneath the drawer—a safe that everyone on board ship used. On the wall to the left of the entrance was a wardrobe, a sink and the door to the head—Navy term for toilet—and shower. The other wardrobes were on the wall at the right of the entrance.

The Michelson was in port for five to seven days at a time to take on supplies, rotate civilian personnel—the oceanographers on board typically came for six month stretches, but individual scientists came and went as the job demanded. During the time in port on any given day, everyone except those on duty abandoned the ship. After getting settled, I wandered about the ship getting to know the place: the mess hall, the laundry room, the rooms amidships and below deck where all the equipment was contained. As you entered the main equipment room, on your right was a large structure resembling an upside down cup mounted to the overhead—this was the Sperry MK3 MOD4 SINS (inertial navigation system). It was about six feet in diameter at the overhead and six feet from overhead to its lowest point off the deck. Inside were miles of wire and electronics that I had learned the function for from January to May 1965 at the Sperry factory school in New Hyde Park on Long Island, NY. On the bulkhead to the left of the entrance was a Bunker Ramo Computer—the most state-of-the-art system on board ship. It tracked a satellite providing very accurate data on the ship’s location at any given time. Anything the ship’s sonar mapped on the ocean bottom could be precisely fixed in latitude and longitude.

Next to the Bunker Ramo computer was another computer, the NAVDAC MKII (for navigation data assimilation computer). This system I learned during training at Dam Neck, Virginia from September to December 1964. Next to the NAVDAC, there was a large drafting table and chair where we stood watch during out time at watch. Above the table was an intercom system that allowed us to communicate with the Oceanographers who had their own work area as well as the bridge and other areas of the ship. Behind the table was a refrigerator size unit with a display panel that controlled the SINS system. During our watch, we would periodically record readings from the display on a large piece of drafting paper as well as from the Bunker Ramo. Next to the SINS controller was a large coffee urn that was the most important part of the room. It supplied a constant flow of Java that kept us alert during the eight-hour shifts we each took around the clock. The room had one great benefit that each of us appreciated immediately. It was climate controlled to keep the equipment a constant room temperature—a blessing on hot days in the South Pacific with the outside temperature at a blazing 100 degrees and the humidity a muggy 90 percent plus.

Another climate-controlled room one level below the computer room contained another computer, the Bendix G15D, an aging workhorse used to control the LORAN equipment on board—the LORAN receivers were on the bridge. The computer was the only computer onboard that still used vacuum tubes. The machine was about my height and wide enough that I could just barely get my outstretched hands on either side of its sides. The system had a small center control panel with a few lights and switches. Latches on either side of the control panel at the top allowed me to swing open either side of the machine to access the array of electronics inside: rows of tubes mounted two each on removable printed circuit cards. The G15D was so old that it did not have factory personnel on board ship to ensure it was continuously operational. That task would fall to me and it was one that I came to both love and hate.

My shipmates were far more interesting than the equipment but I would meet most of them once the ship was ready to set sail a few days later. Meantime, I left the ship and spent a few days on base taking in movies during the day and hanging out in my favorite haunt on Honcho Street. When the day arrived for the ship to set sail, I was formally introduced to the small Navy detachment on board. During the night before our last day in port, my two room mates A and T came aboard and began stuffing bottles of whiskey below the drawers in both the lower bunks. I learned during this operation that the whiskey had two purposes: the first was to provide personal libation during the next thirty days at sea; the second to sell near the end of the cruise to all those who had consumed their supply. I was told that a bottle of whiskey could fetch ten times its price depending on the shipboard supply or lack thereof. I had bought two bottles of Chevis that would last me the cruise. I couldn’t get into the whole thing of selling liquor to alcoholics for profit. And then we were on our way.