USS Nimitz On Your Local PBS Station

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JACK!!! Great to have you up on the board... thanks for the info... those guys were on an earlier carrier in 1965, though... Nimitz didn't hit the water until later... Was there an earlier Nimitz? bp

[Bob Kraemer]

Question
Are there 2 Captains on board? You can't be awake 24/7 so who is in charge when the Captian is asleep?

Also who does the opening song, it sounds like Eric Clapton, but I'm fairly sure it's not.

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Nope... one captain and one XO and then a dozen or more line officers in the next tier. There is always an officer of the watch who does the late duty and takes over for the other top guys. The watch sections vary according to the division... in the Comm division, we usually worked 12 on, 12 off, from 7am to 7pm or vice versa. Other folks were "day workers," and they worked about 8 hours a day, but then had several blocks of hours during the week when they had four to eight hour watches. I always liked the 12 on, 12 off deal. At least you know when you had to work... bp

[Jack Redd]

Bill, You were right. I should have check the batteries in my "memory cell". They were on the Forrestal. Oh well, Anchors Aweigh!!!

JAck

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Gotcha! All of us in the Navy had to watch those films of the Forrestal and its horrendous fire off the coast of Vietnam. The ship's nickname was, crudely, the Forrest Fire... bp

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Al emailed and kindly asked me a few things about my Nimitz days tonight. I thought you might be interested in my response... Thanks for asking about this, Al... once I got started, it was hard to quit typing... bp

Hi Al! It was great to see the old girl on the TV show. It think they are doing a great job. Lots of great memories. I was a bitching sailor at the time, but obviously I traveled to so many countries that I'll probably never see again. Rome, Greece, the Pyramids, Jerusalem, and many, many other countries and cities. It was all a priceless experience.

I was a Radioman with a specialty of Technical Controller. On a ship the size of the Nimitz, the radiomen/communicators are split into two camps. One are the message processors. We had an early version of a huge email system that forwarded message traffic to the main officers on the ship. That wasn't me... (although my limited experience with that system is that got me my first IT job in 1983). I was the tech control leading petty officer. What I and my team of guys did is to manage all incoming and outgoing radio signals to and from the ship. That included operation of all the transmitters, receivers, and antennas on the ship. This included HF, UHF, and satellite. All the long HF "whip" antennas you see hanging off the boat all around the deck were ours to maintain and operate. All the little prickly UHF antennas that you see outside the bridge when they are talking with the old man were ours to maintain. And the antennas that tracked the satellites up on top of the bridge were ours to maintain. Inside, we did maintenance on all the receivers and transmitters, and then were in charge of the operation of all those radios. This included all the UHF radios that the aircraft used for their communication, and the continual maintenance of high quality signals for these guys was at times as stressful as air traffic control.

By the way, we also had to take apart and paint all those antennas and had to strip the rust, primer, and paint all the stands that the antennas are hooked to. That's a man's job -- strap on a safety harness, tie up a net, and hang 60 feet above the water slamming an air powered rust gun against the metal hull! We also had to man handle those big 30 and 50 foot whip antennas... one guy straddled it at the bottom hanging all for all it's worth. One guy loosening the huge bolts, and the rest of the guys tying ropes onto it and walking it back down to the deck for painting and repair. It was a great combination of fresh air and outside rough and tumble stuff and then internal IT mind stuff when we were operating underway...

In this job, I had the privilege (an occasional horror) of hearing many of the headlines of the late 70s and early 80s live. I heard when our guys splashed the Libyans during the "Line of Death" days. I heard the entire Iranian hostage rescue attempt live. In fact, the helo guys who flew that mission were pals of ours as they went out there and did radio checks with us for at least two weeks before the event. In fact, my guys talked them into taking them up in the helos for a well-deserved break from the shipboard prison we were in on that cruse -- we set a record for continual time at sea that hadn't been broken since WW2. (You may have seen the TV coverage when we each got two beers when we hit 100 straight days at sea in 1980). Of course, having known those guys made it even harder when the thing blew up in a freak sandstorm. PS. I was 20 when I was managing 10 guys in these duties... where else can you get this experience but the military?

I went out on probably two or three cruises to the Mediterranean, plus shorter cruises to Europe (north Atlantic cruise) and yearly trips down to the Caribbean where the Navy does it's training. We also spent two periods in the shipyards when I was onboard. I have 'cruise books' of all these years. They are similar to college yearbooks... pretty cool.

[pro70z28]

Interesting post BP. My Dad was in communications in the army. I've got an old Bake-O-Lite camera he had with him in WWII with Ledo, Naples, Legorn, Trieste, Grizia, Rome, Grodo, Tarcento, Aversa & Uden scratched into the camera body. Never got to hear any war stories since he passed away when I was fairly young, but I have tons of pictures. I could listen to those stories for hours, cool stuff. Thanks BP.

[Bob Kraemer]

Thanks for the stories BP, looking forward to tonights final episodes. I hope they show it again, I missed the majority of last nights episodes.

[RH]

This has been an awesome series! The company I retired from USAA provides services primarily for the military.The Mid-Atlantic office is located in Norfolk Va just down from the Navy Base.Every time I would go there for meetings I would pass the fleet and Newport News Shipbuiding which has built all of the Nimitz class carriers.Regardless of how crappy my day was it would always lift me up when I looked to the right while passing over Hampton Roads and saw those behemoths at dock. My nieces husband served 2 tours on the Nimitz.

How' bout those pitching deck night time landings

Thats a real pedal fest!