I was on a working party (working and party never made sense to me, but that was a navy term) we were along side a resupply ship at sea off the coast of north Vietnam taking on bombs. The bombs came over on pallets slung from steel cables onto the elevators that are normally used to raise or lower aircraft from the hanger bay to the flight deck. A forklift driver moved the pallets to the hanger deck and then we had to remove the bombs and then put them on these heavy steel rolling carts that had a long steering arm on them. This picture is an updated cart but is similar to the ones we had. 
One man then could roll the cart down the hanger deck to another elevator that went down several decks below the seawater line of the ship to the ammunition magazine. I don't know how many there were in total, but we were loading 5 decks down that day. The bombs went down on the elevator, but it was for bombs only. We men had to go down through a series of hatches.
Now people who like to explore caves often talk about how they sometimes have to squeeze through a narrow passage to get from one open chamber to another open chamber. Back then I was skinny, but these circular hatches were a very tight squeeze for me. Each hatch had an absolutely vertical ladder that led to another hatch until we were 5 decks below. Once we got down there the elevator had to be unloaded. We were in the process of doing that when the ship lost a generator and all the lights went out. All regular compartments on the ship had battery-operated lights for this event, but the magazines did not.
So there we were in the pitch black darkness 5 decks down. We sat down to wait. One of the men thought he might light up a cigarette while we waited, but that idea was quickly quashed as a bad idea in a space loaded with bombs. It probably wouldn't have mattered, but a spark could have ignited a fire (often times there were fumes that were easy to ignite) that could have cooked a bomb and then we would all have been looking for our angelic wings and I seriously doubt any sailor there would have earned angel wings.
The generator was repaired in a half hour or longer and the lights came back on so we could go back to work. In that time there was never a moment when I could see my hand in front of my face. The magazine was fully loaded and we didn't have to go back down there that day.
Writing this reminded me of another working party. I thought I was lucky enough to be handling bomb fins instead of bombs. I thought I was going to have an easier day, until that is, I dropped one on my toe. I don't know how heavy the fins were in their wooden crates, but I know it was extremely painful. I don't know if ordinance men had steel-toed boots, but we didn't. I limped off to sickbay and the corpsman there slid my boot off and jammed my foot into a deep pan he filled with ice. That was more painful than the bomb fin hitting the toe. He wouldn't let me remove my foot for what seemed an eternity. While my toe was black as night, my foot turned blue as the sky above before he let me pull my foot from the icy pan. Once he said it was okay I put my sock and boot back on and limped back to my sleeping compartment and took the rest of the day off.
Copyright Bill Weber 2006-2019 and beyond.
Now people who like to explore caves often talk about how they sometimes have to squeeze through a narrow passage to get from one open chamber to another open chamber. Back then I was skinny, but these circular hatches were a very tight squeeze for me. Each hatch had an absolutely vertical ladder that led to another hatch until we were 5 decks below. Once we got down there the elevator had to be unloaded. We were in the process of doing that when the ship lost a generator and all the lights went out. All regular compartments on the ship had battery-operated lights for this event, but the magazines did not.
So there we were in the pitch black darkness 5 decks down. We sat down to wait. One of the men thought he might light up a cigarette while we waited, but that idea was quickly quashed as a bad idea in a space loaded with bombs. It probably wouldn't have mattered, but a spark could have ignited a fire (often times there were fumes that were easy to ignite) that could have cooked a bomb and then we would all have been looking for our angelic wings and I seriously doubt any sailor there would have earned angel wings.
The generator was repaired in a half hour or longer and the lights came back on so we could go back to work. In that time there was never a moment when I could see my hand in front of my face. The magazine was fully loaded and we didn't have to go back down there that day.
Writing this reminded me of another working party. I thought I was lucky enough to be handling bomb fins instead of bombs. I thought I was going to have an easier day, until that is, I dropped one on my toe. I don't know how heavy the fins were in their wooden crates, but I know it was extremely painful. I don't know if ordinance men had steel-toed boots, but we didn't. I limped off to sickbay and the corpsman there slid my boot off and jammed my foot into a deep pan he filled with ice. That was more painful than the bomb fin hitting the toe. He wouldn't let me remove my foot for what seemed an eternity. While my toe was black as night, my foot turned blue as the sky above before he let me pull my foot from the icy pan. Once he said it was okay I put my sock and boot back on and limped back to my sleeping compartment and took the rest of the day off.
Copyright Bill Weber 2006-2019 and beyond.
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