250709 Way Back

1967.

I never know when one of these little memory gems will surface in my mind. Today this one just appeared so I made a note and started writing.

It was 1967; I was on the Kitty Hawk in the gulf of Tonkin. We were on station and launching day and night strikes against North Vietnam when the ship lost one of its boilers. The ship needed the remaining three to be able to get enough speed to launch planes. We were not due to return to port for some time, so the steam flow was rerouted to maintain power and the boiler that would normally distilled water for showers and washing was then not available. The ship initiated water hours, a navy term for no showers for us sailors. We could still use a sink to wash and shave, but that was it.

Each squadron has their own maintenance people. Most of which work directly on planes as I did at the time, but a few are sent to the ship’s company to do intermediate level maintenance. They sleep in squadron spaces, but work and spend time with other units belonging to the ship. One of those guys was in our sleeping compartment. He was one of 18 in our little 300 square-foot compartment. He never spoke until one day when he came storming down the ladder into our little compartment shrieking about how the ship was on water hours and he couldn’t take a shower. We all looked at him and then looked at each other; we had been on water hours for two weeks! No one had a shower during that time but he just found out about the situation. I sure enjoy memories of those good old days. Bill