….Set condition Zebra throughout the ship”
When you hear that in the movies, there’ll be guys running up and down ladders, through the knee knockers and everyone putting on helmets. I only saw that happen once; my brother Butch and I were standing on the ASROC deck and watched a MIG do a victory roll as it passed our port side, from aft to fore. Right after that, general quarters was sounded and there were people running everywhere, and I along with them. I didn’t have far to go, Radio Central was up two levels on the ladder and then in through a hatch.
Immediatly to your right, is the door entering into Butch’s working compartment. He ran the computer that operated the Tatar Missle System, Port side launcher. Moving to the left, led you down a passageway forward, to the ladder that ran up and down the center of the superstructure, from the Main deck, to the Captain’s bridge. Taking that ladder up one deck, brings you to Communications. Immediatly to your front was the sewing room for the signals bridge, your left was Radio Central and following the passage way aft, was MainComm. From that point on, only authorized personel were allowed to pass.
That meant that any time the M.A.A. (Master At Arms, the ships police) was after your ass, you could run up to MainComm and lose him. It also meant that any time my brother was hot on my ass, I’d run up to Maincomm and laugh at him. We could get food transported up to us, they couldn’t. It also meant that when they “Extinguished the smoking lamp” it was shining bright in MainComm. You could count on seeing all the ships echelon parading through MainComm, “just to see how things were coming”. There wasn’t any officers under Commander that stood around a buttkit and shot the shit with each other, during these operations. Down below, there’s guys loading enough fireworks to level the Eastern seaboard, all the way back to Memphis, but I didn’t feel guilty for lighting up another one.
My combat duty station was in Radio Central, which was nice, since that was my normal job. I had two duty stations at times of combat; one in Central, and the other in my rack. Communications went to war when we pulled out of Norfolk, so other than having to wear a heavy helmet and cover another 5 circuits, it was just another day at work. It’s not until you hear the bosn’ announce “This is not a drill” that the sphincter begin’s to twitch.
I got my ass up to Central as fast as I could and relieved Underdog, aka Dan Raustadt, of his duties, and put on the helmet with the soundpowered phones. I was connected to the Captain’s bridge, the Admiral’s bridge, CIC, Damage Control Central, and Radio spaces 1 through 5. Immediatly after donning the phones, you listen for a clear spot in conversations, and announce your space is manned and ready. Then you sit and wait.
It’s not like on t.v. where a coupla guys’ll shoot the bull, with their helmets cocked back and having cigarette ash’s falling on their dirty t shirts. No, you sit there and remember all the messages you’ve been reading; all the planes being blown up by Palistinians and some A-rab named Yassar Arafat, doing his best to light up Tel Aviv. You remember hearing the Admirals talking across the hall in Crypto, about how long it’ll take to level Cairo. (These guys musta been talking about something big, ’cause it was going to take 6 minutes and it would all be over). You think about your brother, one deck below and a few frames aft; either franticly trying to get the fucker to work, or chugging coffee and talking about Moose hunting. You look around the compartment and see the K-Y8 nestled in the corner and the long row of patch switches that connect every receiver and coresponding remote position throughout the ship. Off to your left is the patch panel that connects every transmitter on the ship to it’s remote operating positions. Then you look at the bulkhead, which is 1″ aluminum plate, and what a simple .50 caliber machine gun round could do to it.
I listened to Pritac (Primary Tactical 121.5) and Sectac (Secondary Tactical 281.9) for aircraft communications, and then through a few more I don’t remember the frequencies to, but there wasn’t anything going on. I also monitored International Distress (500khz), and there was usually morse code messages being passed from frieghter to frieghter, but this time, there wasn’t even that. Another circuit I monitored was CINCUSNAVEUR’S HICOM, which at the time was in the H.F. range, (2-32khz). These frequencies, and the method they were used, were often rife with static bursts, whistles, and all sorts of strange noises. This time it was as quiet as a church.
All night we cruised through the high rolling seas, everything lit with dark red bulbs, some watching gauges, some franticly trying to get the Mark 1 working again, some cooking our next meal, and one staring at the speakers, wondering what was going to happen next.
