There’s a place called Grande Island in Subic Bay that the Navy leased back in the 60s. The island was run by Special Services and rented to ships for events. The Kitty Hawk would occasionally secure it when we were in port. It was a great place to run around and explore. It was a small, uninhabited, jungle island, not developed enough for people to live on but it was fun for an afternoon get together. There were horseshoe pits, barbecue pits, picnic shelters, and the ship supplied all the hot dogs, hamburgers and beer that could humanly be consumed and best of all it was free! The picture above is yours truly on one afternoon excursion to Grande Island. I was still skinny then! Grande Island has since been developed into a resort area for tourists. The pictures below are current and things are so different today than when I was there. The developers must have removed thousands of rocks and boulders there to clear for those beaches that are there today.
My first trip to Grande was to explore an uninhabited island and it was fun. My second trip was on shore patrol duty, not fun at all. The thing about Grande was it required a boat to get there. The Navy used WW-2 landing craft to ferry sailors to and fro. The trip was about 20 minutes each way and there was one coxswain (pronounced cox’n) to control the boat and there were three Shore Patrolmen as his crew, along with perhaps 20 or more rip-roaring drunks per trip. The drunks would be in the bottom of the boat while the Shore Patrolmen were perched on a ledge halfway up the side. Sometimes the drunks would attack the Shore Patrol on trips so we had to use our nightsticks to fend them off during the run back to the carrier pier. We were headed back to the ship on a trip when one of the drunks tried to pull my ankles out from under me so I’d fall into the bottom of the boat; while I brushed his arms away, another climbed up on the ledge of the boat to hurl his guts over the side. He convulsed so hard he flipped over the side and fell into the bay, so the coxswain had to pull back on the throttle and turn back to fish him out of the water. He was okay, but there’s nothing more pathetic than a vomiting, soaking-wet, drunken sailor. We pulled him out of the water anyway and took him back to the ship. Just one more adventure in paradise!
In March of 1968 I had orders to go to advanced aviation electronics school so I left the Kitty Hawk by way of a catapult launch in a propeller driven cargo plane, a slow flier, but from a standstill on the catapult to the edge of the flight deck, it was just as fast as anything in the Navy. Imagine going from 0 to 180 miles per hour in less than 3 seconds. During the launch, we aboard the plane were pushed back into the seats with tremendous force, so strong it was impossible to move a muscle. It was awesome to experience.
Copyright Bill Weber 2006-2019 and beyond.
My first trip to Grande was to explore an uninhabited island and it was fun. My second trip was on shore patrol duty, not fun at all. The thing about Grande was it required a boat to get there. The Navy used WW-2 landing craft to ferry sailors to and fro. The trip was about 20 minutes each way and there was one coxswain (pronounced cox’n) to control the boat and there were three Shore Patrolmen as his crew, along with perhaps 20 or more rip-roaring drunks per trip. The drunks would be in the bottom of the boat while the Shore Patrolmen were perched on a ledge halfway up the side. Sometimes the drunks would attack the Shore Patrol on trips so we had to use our nightsticks to fend them off during the run back to the carrier pier. We were headed back to the ship on a trip when one of the drunks tried to pull my ankles out from under me so I’d fall into the bottom of the boat; while I brushed his arms away, another climbed up on the ledge of the boat to hurl his guts over the side. He convulsed so hard he flipped over the side and fell into the bay, so the coxswain had to pull back on the throttle and turn back to fish him out of the water. He was okay, but there’s nothing more pathetic than a vomiting, soaking-wet, drunken sailor. We pulled him out of the water anyway and took him back to the ship. Just one more adventure in paradise!
In March of 1968 I had orders to go to advanced aviation electronics school so I left the Kitty Hawk by way of a catapult launch in a propeller driven cargo plane, a slow flier, but from a standstill on the catapult to the edge of the flight deck, it was just as fast as anything in the Navy. Imagine going from 0 to 180 miles per hour in less than 3 seconds. During the launch, we aboard the plane were pushed back into the seats with tremendous force, so strong it was impossible to move a muscle. It was awesome to experience.
Copyright Bill Weber 2006-2019 and beyond.
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