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Water, Water, Everywhere
by Don Edwards
I spent 30 years in the U.S. Navy, starting as a seaman apprentice in 1946
and ending when I retired as a Commander in 1976. I am not going to try to
summarize my career. Instead, I will relate a single incident.
Early in 1965 I joined Attack Squadron 75 (VA-75) and deployed with them to
Southeast Asia (off the coast of Viet Nam) aboard the aircraft carrier U.S.S.
Independence. I was a Lieutenant at that time, and was the assistant Maintenance
Officer. The squadron was flying the Grumman A6A Intruder, a new aircraft. This
was the first combat deployment of that aircraft, although the squadron had
deployed on a training cruise to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for two months. VA-75 was
the first operational squadron to fly the A6A, but VA-42, a training squadron,
to which I belonged at the time, had trained VA-75 in flying and maintaining the
A6A. I joined VA-75 upon their return from Cuba and we immediately deployed to
Viet Nam. I am not going to talk about the crews who were shot down and killed,
captured, or rescued, nor will I talk about the problems of maintaining and
keeping a brand new aircraft repaired. I will tell you about an incident that
happened during that cruise that is somewhat amusing.
During my deployments (two) to SE Asia, the carrier would usually operate off
the coast of Viet Nam for about a month, then we would have a rest period (very
much appreciated) in the Philippines (NAS Cubi Point), Hong Kong, or Yokosuka,
Japan for a few days. Normally, three carriers were in the area, so always at
least two would be on combat duty. Usually, we went to the Philippines. On our
first deployment, especially, it seemed to rain every day we were at NAS Cubi
Point. It was what was called the “monsoon season.” We would fly planes off
before we arrived, so our flight crews could get some training flights in.
Usually, there would be enough good weather between rains that we got some
flying in. However, we had extremely heavy rains for part of each day, normally.
We had lots of rain also when we were in combat operations off the coast of Viet
Nam. Nevertheless, every night my squadron launched flights for bombing
missions, usually over North Viet Nam. The A6A had very sophisticated
electronics and was one of the very few aircraft types of the Navy or Air Force
that could operate day or night in all kinds of weather.
Now, I will explain a little about my living conditions. I’m sure that most
people know that the enlisted people live in crowded bunk rooms. I’ve had some
of that, too, but I won’t talk about it. The squadron was assigned sufficient
staterooms for our officers. Each stateroom had a double bunk for the two
officers assigned, a small desk, a chair, clothing lockers, and a sink. No
portholes! Our commanding officer, a senior Commander, did not have a roommate
and had a pretty nice room, with more furniture. The other rooms were assigned
by the squadron. The more senior officers had first choice. Several of the rooms
were slightly larger than the one I described above, with two chairs and more
room, although none could be described as luxurious. Since we had several
commanders and quite a few lieutenant commanders, before the lieutenants, like
me, were reached, there was really no choice except to take whatever was
available. I’m not complaining—I know I had much better quarters than our
enlisted men. I had the bottom bunk. After I became a lieutenant, I always made
sure my roommate was junior to me, so I could have my choice. I didn’t like to
climb into the top bunk. The bunk had a drawer beneath it for storage. The only
things I put into the drawer were my black dress shoes, which I rarely or never
wore, except with my dress blues for an inspection. I wore white uniforms for
the only inspections during that deployment. Back then naval officers wore white
shoes with white uniforms.
My roommate was a member of VA-75, but he had been assigned to duty with the
Air Wing commander, since he was a specialist in data analysis. He was a Limited
Duty Officer like me, limited to duty in his specialty. Unlike me, he had worked
only in his specialty since being commissioned. (Commanding officers had soon
learned that LDOs, ex enlisted men, mostly were very good officers and assigned
them to any duties that they wanted done well.) My specialty was aviation
electronics. My second assignment after being commissioned was to an Air Wing
Staff. Although my primary duty was as Avionics (Aviation Electronics) Officer,
my secondary duties as ordnance officer, nuclear weapons officer, First
Lieutenant, assistant Administrative Officer, assistant maintenance officer,
etc. took much more of my time. In my previous tour in squadron VA-42, I had
started as the Avionics (Aviation Electronics) Division Officer, but I later
served as division officer for the engine mechanics, metalsmiths, and parachute
riggers. My last several months were spent as the division officer in charge of
Supply, because of the problems we had obtaining repair parts for a brand new
aircraft and also to correct another problem that existed in that division. (A
problem that led me into conflict with VA-75, to which I already had orders.)
That problem never was never held against me, though, once I joined VA-75. I can
still remember an argument with the VA-75 Maintenance Officer, my boss after I
joined the squadron, who later in our deployment to Viet Nam became the
Commanding Officer, after a couple of other COs became captured or killed. We
were in the Administrative office of VA-75, where the offices of the XO and CO
adjoined. The door to the CO’s office was open, and after a few minutes of our
argument, he shouted to the Maintenance Officer, “Just settle the g…d…
thing!”) In VA-75, I was originally the assistant Maintenance Officer,
concerned with all aspects of aviation maintenance. Now, back to data analysis.
A couple of years before this time the Aviation Navy had embarked on a system to
record and analyze all the time spent on maintenance. All maintenance officers
and maintenance enlisted men had to account for every minute of their time every
day. Eventually, the system resulted in a lot of useful information, such as the
amount of man hours used in working on various aircraft equipment, the most
common types of problems, and the actual monetary cost (of man-hours and
replacement parts) to repair the various types of equipment. The various
officers (and enlisted men) involved in maintenance soon decided that it was
ridiculous to try to record every minute of their time. I would fill out a card
stating that I spent from 0730 to 1130 doing paperwork or overseeing some aspect
of maintenance, from 1130 to 1230 at lunch, then 1230 to 1630 doing more
paperwork. The officers who were pilots or bombardiers would say they were
flying, debriefing, etc. in addition to doing paperwork in their jobs as
division officers or as the Maintenance Officer. All of this information was
recorded in the computer of the Air Station (ashore) or of the ship (afloat). My
roommate was an expert in designing reports and interpreting the information in
those reports. As I said, eventually we obtained a lot of valuable information
from those reports when we began to limit our recording of information to items
such as what the problem in the aircraft had been, how many people of what
rating had spent what amount of time, and what parts had been used fixing the
problem. The mechanics and technicians involved in fixing problems were pretty
good at recording on the maintenance documents the amount of time they had
worked on the problem and parts required to fix it.
None of the above information has anything to do with the story I’m
eventually going to tell, but I’m the one telling the story so I’ll include
what I like. Younger readers of this story might have noticed that I said the
computer of the ship or air station. In those days, computers, which may not
have had as much computing ability as an ordinary desktop computer of the
present, were extremely large and expensive. Input of most data was on
key-punched cards. A ship or air station had one computer which held data on
personnel and payroll records, etc. To illustrate the differences between then
and now, I’m going to include a copy of a card my sister-in-law, Oneta
Nichols, gave me a short time ago.
Now, to continue my story. Our stateroom was on the 03 level, just below the
flight deck. Of course, the flight deck, and our stateroom walls and floor was
made of steel. All over the flight deck were places where power cables (28 Volts
DC) could be pulled out to be attached to aircraft for power when working on
equipment, when starting the aircraft, etc. When the cables were rolled up and
the covers to these places were closed, aircraft could roll across the flat deck
and the covers with no trouble. One of these power stations was located directly
above our stateroom. The cover to the power cable did not seal well enough to
keep water out during the extremely heavy rains we experienced and the little
compartment that held the cable would get a lot of water in it. Unfortunately,
that compartment leaked water into our room below it. We had been getting a lot
of water and had started keeping a mop in our room to dry the floor. One day,
the morning after we had arrived in Subic Bay in the Philippines, we must have
had a cloudburst the night before. My roommate and I awoke to find that there
were 4 or 5 inches of water on the floor. Although the door to the stateroom had
a threshold, the door did not make a seal, and water had seeped out of the room
and was floating around in the nearby passageways. I don’t know what the
Engineering Officer of the ship was doing roaming around up there that early in
the morning, but he was. His stateroom was on a much lower deck. He traced down
the source of the water to our stateroom. By that time we had dressed, poured
the water out of our shoes and had put our wet shoes on. We told him we had
complained about the problem but nothing had been done. He was a commander, a
tough old Engineering Duty Officer. He looked the situation over, and stated,
“Of course, the leak in that little compartment should be fixed, but the
easiest, cheapest, and fastest fix would be to run a drain pipe from that
compartment to the drain pipe beneath your sink. Get some clothes, and move to
the BOQ at Cubi Point. Don’t come back to this stateroom for the next three
days. The Damage Control Officer and his crew work for me, and I guarantee that
the problem will be fixed within three days. I’m not going to have water
splashing around on the inside decks of my ship!” Of course, we were delighted
to move off the carrier for three days. After my roommate informed the Air Group
Commander, and I informed my Executive Officer that we had been ordered to move
to the BOQ by the Engineering Officer, we moved off the ship. We came back
during the day to do our work, but we never checked on the progress of work in
our stateroom. We were afraid that we would find out that the work had been
completed on the first day and we would have to move back aboard ship. We were
not about to give up our 3 days of staying ashore. At the end of 3 days, we
reluctantly returned and found the work completed. We had no more problems with
water in our stateroom.
Quite some time after that, for some reason I pulled out the drawer beneath
my bunk. My dress shoes were green, completely covered with fungus! I took a
picture of them with my Polaroid Camera and sent the picture to my wife, Edna.
Unfortunately, the film was black and white, but the picture showed that there
was something drastically wrong with my shoes. If I could find the picture, I’d
show it here. I cleaned up the shoes, but I could never get what I considered a
proper shine for an inspection shoe. I had to buy new shoes.
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Pfc. Bennie Joe
Graham Little
Rock, MS
Cpl. Canoy Lewis Sistrunk
Sebastopol, MS
Warrant Officer Willis Wilson
Smith Decatur, MS
Maj. Thomas Moody Felton
Union, MS 
