Sentinel, Power 210506

      Our power went out early this morning. It is currently out for over two hours (thank God for batteries in laptop computers). This event reminds me of an old navy story. You may note at this point, everything reminds me of a story.

      I was aboard the Kitty Hawk (aircraft carrier) back in 1967, operating of the coast of Vietnam and we were in the middle of an underway replenishment at sea. There was an ammunition/oiler lined up beside us passing aviation gas and 500 pound bombs over highlines. The fuel and bombs all came through the hanger deck.

      It was my lucky day (not really a lucky day) because I had been selected to participate in a working party for the purpose of the moving of the bombs into the ammunition locker. That may seem simple enough, but not so much at all. Each of us had a heavy steel rolling cart. The fork lift would place a bomb onto the cart and we lucky ones would get to push the cart over to an elevator. The elevator lowered the bombs down into the belly of the beast, while we cart pushers were not allowed on the elevator. Next to the elevator was a hatch. The hatch was very small, about the size as if you hold your arms out like you would hug a person. I was skinny then and still had a tough time getting through the hatch. Below the hatch was a vertical ladder. A vertical ladder is difficult to use. The ladder went down to another hatch of the same size, which had another ladder that went to another hatch. We ended up going through five hatches which put us four levels below the ship’s waterline. The elevator was there awaiting us. We began to move the bombs from the elevator into the ammo locker and that was when it happened.

      The ship had a generator failure. There we were stuck five levels down in absolute darkness. We had no idea at the time what had happened. There was no communication down there. The ship could have been on fire or under attack. We would not know. There was no safe way to go back up the ladders in the darkness, so we just sat in the darkness. Even after however long it was it was too dark to see one’s hand in front of his face. One guy said, “this would be a good time to light up a smoke.” That idea was put to rest quickly, not a good idea to be lighting up in an ammo locker with little to no ventilation.

      It always seemed like an adventure to me being aboard ship with all the activity during a war. After all the commotion stopped, it seemed slow and dreary. A peacetime navy becomes very mundane.