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A LIVING HISTORY (IN THEIR OWN WORDS) |
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Regarding the historic trip from San Diego, California to Yokosuka, Japan in 1960. (The McMorris made the trip in fourteen days as an independent unit. The ship required no stops to replenish her fuel nor at sea. The ship arrived in Yokosuka, Japan with close to 30 percent of it's fuel remaining. No other ship of it's type has ever done that again.) "We had studied the maps and knew we could do it. It was a feather in our cap to accomplish the trip as we did. I remember when we were at sea, we received a dispatch from the fleet weather office advising us to change course to avoid a large storm system. I saw the reports but decided not to heed the warning. We reported a Negative to that, and unless otherwise directed, we will remain on course as planned. With no orders to change course, we continued on our journey. It would have been bad for us if we had run into trouble, but it all worked out." Martin Zenni (1st CO) ~ (in a phone conversation Nov 1998) |
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I was the Weapons Officer (1967-69). The "Mac-maru" made one of the first Indian Ocean cruises where SM1 Fred Ballard and I were #1 and #2 on the hated Pollywog list. Fred stood JOOD watches during this time and just before crossing the line we managed to throw all the bosun pipes over the side. The old man was a stickler for 1MC correctness, so all the Shellback BMs were in a world of hurt. Of course, we paid for that hurt several fold during initiation! Lee Mairs ~ (from Guest Book Nov 1998) |
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WESTPAC CRUISE 1970-71 It was a dark and stormy night! No really it was. We were in transit from Midway Island, destination Yokosuka, Japan. We hit several major storms, one of which we had to change course and outrun by over 100 miles off our base track. One rough night, I was standing watch on the lee helm when the OD stumbled and fell into me, I fell into the helmsman, and the three of us landed in a heap by the chart table on the portside of the bridge. No one was hurt, and we scrambled back to our stations, without major incident. We were in the troughs so much, I swear the waves were 40 foot plus! As a bridge watch stander, I got to spend many hours on the bridge underway. Joe Pine's comments about the Red Baron and Soviet ships bought back a vivid memory. By the way, Joe and I spent many hours together on that same bridge, so I am sure he would remember Valentines Day 1971 early in the morning. We were steaming next to a Russian guided missile destroyer . The Red Baron asked the signalman to flash this message: "Good morning, it is a beautiful day to be at sea, Happy Valentines Day!" About ten minuets later we received a blinking light back stating: "Do not understand what Valentines Day is, please move back to the oiler (a Russian oiler that was steaming with the destroyer), we are about to fire our missiles." With a few nervous laughs the Old Man stayed right with the Destroyer and we were side by side keeping pace as the Soviet ship went to GQ and fired a missile. What an exciting moment. By that time, I had rotated to a lookout position and got a great view and a great picture that I snapped through my binoculars. OOPS, I guess I wasn't supposed to do that! Skip Reynolds ~ (e-mail Nov 1998) |
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WESTPAC Cruise 1972 I was a Radarman just out of Electronic Warfare Training. We had no EW counter measures capabilities and I always told the others in CIC that if I ever caught a NV missile boat painting us with their fire control radar "I WAS OUTA THERE!" On a boring night with a "brand new" Ensign as CIC officer I decided to spice things up. I tuned to a coastal surveillance radar and began rapidly digging through my EW books. People starting asking what I had and I told them that I wasn't sure. Then I got up and put my life jacket on. Now everybody was interested and trying to help. About the time that the young Ensign walked over I yelled "LOCKED ON!!!" and ran through Sonar out to the 02 level deck. On my heels was the rest of the CIC watch. I told them that I was just joking around and we walked back into CIC. There we found a very pale and shaken young Ensign hunched over the EW gear (which he knew nothing about) trying to tune in the radar that I'd been listening to with one hand and digging through my books with the other. (Sorry Sir) Scott Vliek ~ (Nov 1998) |
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You asked for memories. I remember a one day run out of Charleston, before we were put into commission. We ran into a squall just out, actually I should say that I remember lunch that day, it was all over the ship, everyone was sick (cream corn and pork chops). I have some pictures of the ships company stationed in barracks at Charleston, all I need to do is find them. Milt Qualley (Plank Owner) ~ (from Guest Book Dec 1998) |
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I have been thinking a lot about the Mac since I first visited the website. Several memories are very vivid even after 30 years in the Navy. One of my fondest concerns one of our Special Operations north of Midway Island. After approximately 50 days shadowing Soviet tracking ships we turned for home on the far western edge of the area. Upon turning the Captain (LCDR Hark) "The Red Baron" sent a flashing light message to the Master of the Soviet ship Chasma wishing him and his crew a bon voyage home. The response was very courteous with the caveat "Thank you but be advised my home is at sea". I have always remembered this on those quiet evenings over the years as I strolled the decks of the other ships upon which I have served. A sailors home really is at sea. M.G. "Joe" Pine (Quartermaster 70-72) ~ (e-mail DEC 1998) |
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I was reading some of the comments in the guestbook and one in particular really brought back memories. The shakedown cruise prior to commissioning. After 2-3 months of living in a barracks we had all lost our sea-legs and were really sick. I'm sure I have told that story to all of my family and most of my friends. Leonard S. Brushwood, Jr. (Plank Owner) ~ (from Guest Book Jun 1999) |
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1966-67: Doing Special Ops northwest of Midway, we often watched for incoming missile firings, or more specifically splashdowns. Upon sighting the burning reentry body -- which looked like a Roman Candle flare -- those topside would attempt to determine "bearing drift" which indicated it would pass ahead or behind us. One particular shot came it with a constant bearing, indicating it was headed directly at us. It glowed brighter and brighter and then stopped burning, becoming nearly invisible in the process. This caused great concern (one seaman on the signal bridge actually ran in small circles yelling "it's gonna hit us, it's gonna hit us!!"). Fortunately it apparently passed over the ship and impacted on the down range side (opposite where it had first been sighted) about a half mile away. I believe it was Winston Churchill who said that nothing is more exciting than to be shot at and missed; even though we were not actually a target most of us could identify with his comments that day. J. L. "Skip" MacMichael (Communications Officer 1966-67)~(e-mail Oct 1999) |
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During the early 60's, we were test firing the MK 3 torpedo and a chopper was supposed to track it so we could later recover it. The chopper got too close to the water and the fish locked on it, coming up out of the water in an attempt to hit it, it made two passes at the chopper. Quite a sight to see a torpedo going straight up into the air like this one did. We also had a qualifying gunnery exercise ending with firing non-frag at drones. The first drone was launched late afternoon and came in at us off the starboard side. Mount 31 picked it up and fired I believe two rounds and then the cheers went up as the drone was shot down. The CO of the drone ship said it was just pure luck and wanted to launch a second drone. This one also came in about the same place and Mount 31 fired about 5 rounds and again the cheers went up. The CO of the drone ship refused to launch a third one after it was requested. That night the CO, I believe Spencer, was presented with the propellers from both drones. We got our first "E". Ron Prentice~(e-mail, Oct 1999) |
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There was this lady who worked in supply organization in Long Beach... Every day she would walk up and down the aisle showing off her rear end if she knew we were watching... We always were, she really had a nice one... Well, we had a bunch of these really strong rubber bands we used to bind up data cards etc... Someone got the bright idea to make slingshots with them to shoot paperclips into cardboard boxes... Well that lady with the nice rear end wouldn't give any of us so much as the time of day and someone had to get even ... That rear end made a nice moving target so XXXX (name withheld), I'm almost positive it was, took dead aim at it with his slingshot and imbedded a paperclip in her right rear... No more target practice, no more slingshots, and no liberty for about a week for everyone in our unit... Jimmy Sizemore~(e-mail Oct 2003) |
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Escorting a Soviet Juliett Nuclear Missile Submarine to Vladivostok... I was recently surfing the World Wide Web looking for information about the Soviet, Juliett class subs, when I saw the following online ad: SUBEXPO, LTD-offers an ex-Soviet Juliett-class nuclear missile submarine for hire or sale. This ad really surprised me, however I wasn't too surprised when I tried to access the webpage and got the message that this page cannot be found ! We've come a long way from somewhere out in the North Pacific in December 1969, during the height of the cold war when such subs were roaming about loaded for bear with nuclear anti-ship cruise missiles and manned by Soviet sailors. This is how things were when the USS McMorris DE1036 intercepted a surfaced Juliett, and this is how things were during those three days that we followed her almost to her homeport of Vladivostok. The Russians had a sense of humor and actually invited McMorris in for a port visit, however we promptly declined and after offering our appreciation turned toward our next destination Sasebo Japan. The McMorris was fitted out for electronic intelligence and she stayed pretty darn busy during those heady days of the Cold War, performing one special operations assignment after another. It seems ship and crew spent much more time at sea than alongside some pier, slacking in port. Our assigned homeport was Pearl Harbor Hawaii, however we were in and out of Subic Bay in the Philippines more than Pearl, “ a WestPac sailors dream come true “. We had been operating out of Subic for some time coming and going on different ops, when we got the word to get underway for Kaohsiung Taiwan where we would be participating in Taiwan Patrols, then back to Subic for about two weeks, then out again on local ops. It was while we were on our way back to Subic that the ship received a message to head north to a certain Lat, Long, known only to a few vital crewmembers and intercept and accompany a Russian sub and her watchdog Russian trawler. The ship put the petal to the metal and cranked out about 21 knots, however at over 200 miles away it still took us about 10 hours to arrive at their position. The Russians were underway in a northeasterly direction in no great hurry, almost leisurely in fact. No doubt they had been ordered not to give their uninvited guests any kind of show, which of course would have increased our knowledge of Juliett class submarines. All sixteen deployed Soviet, Juliett class cruise missile submarines were built between 1961 and 1968, so were still fairly new back in 1969. The Juliett’s had by the late sixties morphed from a nuclear missile platform for strikes against the US into a formidable platform for anti-carrier operations. Our sub in all probability carried four of the nuclear armed P-6’s, (NATO designation SS-N-3A SHADDOCK ). These carried 20 kiloton nuclear warheads, plenty big to vaporize any carrier or surface vessel and thus put them permanently out of business. I cannot tell you what her name or hull number was because the Russians routinely painted them out or put up fake numbers to keep the west guessing. I can tell you that she was one of only four such Juliett’s assigned to the Pacific area of operations. It has been speculated that our particular Juliett had suffered some type of engineering casualty making it expedient for her to surface and not resubmerge. When we intercepted her she was already on her way to the port of Vladivostok for necessary repairs. McMorris took a parallel course on her port side and maintained a distance of about 350 yards. We spent about three days escorting her until approaching Soviet waters. The last day of our tagalong a very ominous looking Soviet Harmone helicopter flew around our ship several times taking photographs through its open side door. Just to maintain the upper hand McMorris had a photographers mate onboard who was clicking away at the sub and now was pointed at the sky capturing close-ups of the Harmone, through his telephoto lens. This whole episode was quite exciting for crewmembers of the Mighty-Mac who spent all their available free time manning the rails topside observing our enemy and his mighty machines. I used to sneak up to the signal bridge and peer at them through the “Big-Eyes”, binoculars. This view turned them from indistinguishable enemy into individual men with faces not unlike many in our own crew. This was a revelation for me because it was the very first time that I had actually seen Soviet military sailors and was close enough to discern their humanity. There was always a crowd of Soviet sailors peering back at us from the open cockpit at the top of the subs huge sail. I admired their sharp uniforms, dressed as they were in dark blue jumpsuits decorated appropriately with patches and rank devices. The officers wore shoulder boards with gold piping, indicating their rank, and all wore those furry looking caps, what I refer to as Bolshevik hats. All and all they were a sharp and professional looking group of adversaries, men who we knew would not hesitate at attempting to annihilate our ship and crew, if the orders came down from mother Russia. The Russians were friendly and tried to be congenial, waving and smiling at their US counterparts, however after observing the Soviet Navy pennant flying from her stern we were again brought back to reality and returned their waves and salutes with the finger. I don’t think they understood this gesture though and persisted in their friendly waves and smiles. I for one am more than a little ashamed for our exhibition of the “Bird”, but you must remember that this was the pinnacle of the cold war! Epilog: I just recently completed a seven month stint working for Norwegian Cruise Line and was being trained to become the ships Communications/Electronic Officer. Two of my mentors were Russians , Victor and Alexey and were the best people I met while serving onboard two unspecified NCL vessels . I liked them so much that I told them I was really happy to know them and glad we (US) never had to nuke them. They returned the sentiments and then we would return to bashing the Norwegians onboard who with the exception of the vessel Masters all had attitudes and were arrogant to boot. This is very ironic, being that I am from Norwegian decent myself and actually got along better and liked a lot more my little Russian buddies, who not too long ago were my enemy! These days I would wave friendly at the Russians and flip the Bird to the Norwegians, what a world we inhabit! Fredrick Gary Hareland~(e-mail Mar 2005) |
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HOW the USS McMORRIS DE1036 HELPED WIN the RACE to
the MOON (The four Claud Jones-class escorts were the ultimate attempt to develop inexpensive mass-production ships. Slow and lightly armed, they were considered abject failures, ending their careers as Electronic Intelligence Platforms, p282, U.S. Destroyers, an Illustrated History, Norman Freidman, U.S. Naval Institute Press, 1982) THE BEGINNING: The USS McMorris DE1036 was an oxymoron during the 1960's due in part to the rapid advances in nuclear submarine technology. The underwater speed and increased depths of Soviet nuclear subs made McMorris an obsolete Anti Submarine Warfare platform. ASW was of course the stated purpose behind building the USS McMorris to begin with, so what to do with her was the question! The US Navy had many missions back during the cold war and the Mighty MAC would be most useful as an electronic intelligence platform. While fulfilling her new mission she would be on constant recall and ready to get underway for worldwide deployment at an instants notice. This was not always appreciated at the time by the crew who were after all your typical" navy liberty hounds", however in retrospect we had many exciting missions and travels. The Mighty Mac turned into our magic carpet, transporting us to the other side of the world and back, it was a fantastic journey during my two years aboard her. I was one of her electricians and helped operate and maintain her electrical system, and when the Captain wanted to make an impression in port he would have us put up the dress ships lights. These were a string of lights that went over the mast from bow to stern, and also totally around the ship, hung as they were on the life lines. So I also helped to spruce her up and make her look good. At night, no dame ever looked more decked out than the McMorris with all of her dress ship lights illuminated. I was a flunk out from the US Navy's Nuclear Power School at Mare Island Navy Shipyard located in the San Francisco Bay Area. Unlike some of my classmates who flunked out on purpose to get out of the nuclear program, I did it the old fashioned way by being just too dumb. I can still remember Lt. Cmdr. W.S. Cruden, the schools CO, peering down at me from behind his big desk, not unlike an entomologist studying a bug, and exclaiming that he guessed that they were just going to have to" Trip Me Out On AN OVERLOAD." That was the end of my navy nuclear career and all of my hopes for entering the submarine service as I was told to put in for anything except sub school or sub duty. This was a big disappointment for me; however I gave my choices much thought and tried to make the most of my situation. I figured that if I wasn't going to spend most of my time underwater that I really wanted to see the world and be a sailor. It was a simple matter of deduction to figure out that smaller ships were able to hit a lot more ports and that once in port you had to share it with a lot less sailors, so I reasoned that a Destroyer Escort was the perfect ship for me and if she was home ported out of Pearl Harbor, then so much the better. The navy was good to me and I received my orders for the USS McMORRIS DE1036 home ported in Pearl, while I was temporarily stationed at Treasure Island. I reported onboard McMorris on 14 June 1968 and stayed with her until 20 July 1970, the most exciting two years of my life. I would soon be getting underway onboard my first ship, DE1036 was a vessel that would give me plenty of sea time to develop my sea legs. I reported onboard a landlubber, and would leave a world traveled old salt. THE SPACE RACE: During the summer of 1968, the sight of a single navy ship, quietly slipping away from her home port of Pearl Harbor Hawaii, signaled a covert heating up of the "Space Race" between the Soviets and the United States. The USS McMorris DE1036 was beginning an odyssey that would last four months, steam half way around the world, and help to change history. During 1967 and 1968 our Central Intelligence Agency had accumulated enough intelligence about the Soviet space program to suspect that the Russians were about to stage another of their space spectaculars, which if successful would up stage the U.S. and NASA and win the Space Race. The CIA believed the Russians were planning a manned circumlunar space flight by the end of 1968. Agency analysts also knew that the Soviet Unions latest planned space probes, called Zond and designed to go to the moon and back, were in actuality a lightened and automated version of the Soyuz manned craft. These spacecraft with their lunar missions were the perfect precursor step leading toward their goal of a man to the moon ahead of the United States. Our government and NASA were nervous and wanted definitive answers, thus dispatching McMorris to a small volcanic island located in the Indian Ocean. The Soviets were already there with two of their command-control and recovery ships, the Morzhovets and Nevel, standing by for the next Russian space shot. The McMorris and her crew of 180 officers and men would be onsite with the Russians to collaborate and confirm U.S. intelligence, enabling our agencies to respond to this latest threat to national security and prestige. THE MIGHTY MAC: The Mighty Mac as she was affectionately referred to by her crew was the forth and final ship of her class, the Claud Jones class of Destroyer Escorts, all commissioned between 1959 and 1960.This class embodied several advanced features including a unique upper deck arrangement, aluminum mast and superstructure, and powerful sonar detection equipment. Too slow for ASW and too lightly armed for effective surface combat, her ultimate mission would be determined by an early feat of extremely long range capability which was demonstrated by the McMorris back in 1960. Her historic 4,966 mile non-stop transit of the Pacific from San Diego California to Yokosuka Japan set a record and was the first time any U.S. destroyer type vessel ever attempted a voyage of this distance without in-route logistical support. The 14 day trip was made at an average speed of 14.8 knots and the ship arrived in Yokosuka with 30 percent of her fuel capacity remaining. Such economy of operation and extremely long range were prerequisite for operating independently like a shark, cruising vast expanses of the Pacific and Indian oceans looking for prey. Our prey would be the Soviets and we would bring to bear on them our many and diverse optical and electronic sensors. We would not fire a single round nor draw a drop of blood; our job was to gather intelligence about freedom's arch enemy, that atheistic evil empire to the north, whose goal was nothing short of world domination. Our "Greywarrior" and crew along with untold others played a big part in helping to bring down and slay this communistic giant. The key to Uncle Sam's trawler fleets operational economy was due mainly to a combination of diesel propulsion and a very flexible engineering plant configuration. The ships had forward engine rooms containing two of their four Fairbanks-Morse diesel propulsion engines, and an after engine room with the other two. The large compartment separating these engine rooms was the "Reduction Gear Room", where massive reduction gears and pneumatic clutches reduced the engine RPM and transferred the power to a single shaft driving a single screw. Also located in this "red gear room", was a small soundproofed, air conditioned control booth known as "Main Control". Jam packed with instrumentation gauges and control levers, the engineer of the watch could monitor and control the entire engineering plant from the control booth. From the main control the engineer could take local control of the main engines, throttle them up or down and clutch them in or out for any combination of operational profile required by the bridge including reversing or clutching out the ships screw or propeller. If our mission required a slow loiter the ship could cruise around at greatly reduced speed by using only two main engines or even go down to only one, thus saving precious fuel. Of course if we were in a hurry and had to put the petal to the metal, than all four mains would be clutched in and throttled up. At other times it was necessary for the ship to clutch out and shut down all four mains and just drift (DIW) or dead-in-the-water. During her spying career McMorris would arrive on station and then go into her DIW mode, sometimes for days at a time, the only sounds and vibrations coming from her diesel generator sets and ventilation fans. DIW could be the most uncomfortable operational mode for the crew as the ships motions could only be described as a kind of unnatural wallowing and depending on the sea state could induce motion sickness in crewmembers. Many times I've observed less salty shipmates manning the ships safety rails and heaving their guts out, feeding the fish due to our vessels unrestrained rolling, pitching, and wallowing motions while DIW. You know what they say about, "War being Hell". THE TRANSIT: Our transit from Pearl Harbor Hawaii to the obscure little island of Mauritius in the southern Indian Ocean took us 35 days. Our mission was to relieve Uncle Sam's number 2 trawler and 2nd vessel of the Claud Jones class, the U.S.S. John R. Perry DE1034, which had been on station for the last several months, and who had relieved the USS Claud Jones DE1032 number 1 trawler. McMorris arrived in Port Louis, Mauritius on 4 September 1968 after a fast and furious voyage in which ship and crew visited only three en route ports, Guam, Subic Bay Philippines, and Colombo Ceylon. Guam was strictly a fuel stop to top off our tanks and we were underway again in a matter of hours. I can still remember those big old B-52's flying right over our mast on their return from bombing runs over Viet Nam. They were wearing their jungle war paint and were very impressive sights as they flew their final approaches to land at Anderson AFB, Guam. It served to remind the crew that in some locations the cold war was anything but, and that our guys were getting shot at and killed, it only galvanized our hatred for the red menace and motivated us to do a better job of spying on those bastards. Our next port of call and by far the most anticipated for Westpac sailors, was Subic Bay P.I. The sexual exploits and debauchery of sailors in the wild little town of Alongapo is nothing short of legendary. Old salts bragged about past visits and getting back to their loved ones and new uninitiated sailors could hardly wait for their turn in this macro den-of-iniquity. Many a poor boy has been corrupted and launched on the road to perdition, after a visit to Alongapo. The beer was cold and the wild woman were numerous, willing, and hot. Throw in a mix of young, naive and inexperienced sailors and you had a bad and sometimes lethal combination. I personally got so totally inebriated one night that I tried to step out in front of a moving Jeepney, which promptly ran over my right foot and ankle. I actually owe my life to the Good Lord and to Petty Officer Bauman who was temporarily assigned to McMorris as our ship photographer for this mission; he literally pulled me back from annihilation by yanking on my uniform jumper, thus restraining me from getting run over completely. Thank you again PO Bauman, wherever you are! After that episode I never again questioned the purpose or utility of my navy uniforms. Thank God the McMorris was underway again after only a few days in sin city due to a brewing storm, actually we were trying to beat a typhoon which was directly in our route to Colombo. We steamed out of Subic Bay and put the petal to the metal, trying to outrun the storm, we steamed right on past the alluring lights of Singapore and headed into the Straits of Malacca where it caught up with us full force. The ship was being tossed like a toy and was more like a submarine than a ship with the waves breaking over our mast. The ship was groaning and creaking like it was made of wood instead of steel and aluminum. I've never before or since heard such straining and loud noises from a ship and then there was the periodic pounding of the anchor on the side of the ships hull every time she bottomed out in her downward pitching motion. This was my storm of a lifetime and I must admit that I was scared to death and in fervent prayer to the Good Lord, to not only forgive my unrighteous activities in Alongapo, but to spare myself and the rest of the crew from impending disaster from this horrible typhoon. The Good Lord answered our prayers that day and ship and crew survived to continue the mission and life. By the time we pulled into Colombo, Ceylon the seas were calm again and the crew was ready for some good old fashioned tourism. Back in 1968 the world was not quite such the homogeneous place that it has become today and when you traveled to a foreign country, it still looked foreign. Ceylon had only received her independence from Britain ten years earlier and Colombo still had that wonderful mix of local and colonial architecture. It was a wonderfully foreign looking place to the McMorris crew and you might describe it as looking just like some exotic place you might see in the movies. We would spend four great days enjoying the beauty of this tea growing paradise and many of the crew traveled to the town of Kandy for the annual elephant festival and to visit the ornate Temple of the Tooth. Unfortunately change was in the air and the Ceylonese would soon rename their country Sri Lanka and in less than five years the country would be consumed by civil war, thus turning a tropical paradise into a literal hell. But upon our departure, life on Ceylon was still good and the crew was looking forward to crossing the equator, unless you were still a slimy polly wog like myself, then it was something to worry about. THE EQUATOR CROSSING: Back in 1968 the Equator crossing initiation was serious business for sailors and was based on traditions going back hundreds of years, back even before there was a U.S. Navy. The initiation we went through on 31 August 1968, out in the Indian Ocean in Latitude 00000 and Longitude 74 degrees,58 ' E, would be considered extreme hazing by today's politically correct standards and woman crewmembers. For us slimy polly wogs, circa 1968 it was a rite of passage into the Ancient Order of the Deep, where we earned the right to become Trusty Shellbacks. I and every other polly wog that day had the slime beat off of us, swam through the garbage chute, kissed a dead shark, kissed the Royal Baby's grease coated lifer gut, got a shot of hot sauce in our mouths by the Royal Dentist, crawled on deck tread the entire length of the ship on our elbows and knees, shaved the hair off of our left leg and suffered untold other indignities all for the privilege of becoming Shellback's. In the end it was considered worth it and we were proud to earn the name Royal Shellback's. Next stop, Port Louis Mauritius better known as the Isle of the Dodo, as it was here on this lovely volcanic island that the Dodo bird was driven into extinction. We arrived on September 4 and spent the first two days relieving our sister ship, U.S.S. John R. Perry DE1034. Our stay in Port Louis was cut short when on September 6 our quarry, the Soviet command, control and recovery ships were making ready to get underway. Our job for the next month and a half would be to dog the Morzhovets and Nevel, and follow them like puppies. When they got underway, we got underway, where they would go, McMorris and crew would go. It wasn't these ships that Uncle Sam was interested in, it was what they were up to, what they were doing, what space craft they were tracking. Both Soviet vessels were ex-Vostok class former timber carriers that were completely modified with a most comprehensive array of tracking, direction finding, and directional antenna's, not to mention the massive electronic systems that filled every available nook and cranny onboard these ships. The truth is that these two Soviet vessels literally bristled with antenna designed for tracking and controlling Russian spacecraft. McMorris also bristled with specialized antenna, designed to keep track of the Russians and we were good at our job and provided much intelligence during the cold war. She was a true cold war warrior and I'm still proud to have served aboard her. D.I.W.: Although we just blindly followed our Soviet lead ships and had no idea where we were all headed for, we all eventually ended up very close to the following coordinates:32 degrees 64'S,65 degrees 55'E,where we operated DIW for days on end. On the morning of September 15,1968 while our little armada of ships were still bobbing around the southern Indian Ocean, DIW waiting for some action, the left launch pad at Site 81 in Tyuratam was coming alive with preparations for the launch of "Zond 5". Desat', nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, tri, dva, odin, ----ignition and the giant Soviet Proton-K/Block D, heavy lift booster burst into life with an ear splitting crescendo of synchronized rocket engines. The exact time was 21:42:11 UTC, when her six first stage RD-253 rocket engines crackled into life, six long shards of fire providing over 1,981,620 pounds of thrust slowly lifting Zond 5 on its long journey to the moon. The horrific noise and attendant vibration were heard and felt for miles around. It was an impressive four stage stack as the huge beast accelerated ever upward through the clear Soviet skies toward the moon. Nobody could know that this would be an historic mission because nobody knew for sure that this mission would meet with success, however Zond 5 would go down in the history books as the first Tran lunar spacecraft to go around the moon and be successfully recovered back on Earth. A much greater purpose and happier ending for a booster originally conceived to deliver a 100 Megaton thermonuclear warhead on the good old U.S.A. The competition of the space race tended to sublimate our mutual aggressions, and actually brought out the best of both super powers, after all. THE SPLASH DOWN: Known to the Soviets by the official designation Soyuz 7K-L1 s/n 9L,this circum-lunar spacecraft carried a payload of film cameras, and a host of living specimens including turtles, meal worms, plants, wheat, pine and barley seeds, wine flies, bacteria, and chlorella. Three days later, on the 17th, it made a course correction and swung around the Moon only 1,950 Km from the surface and headed back toward Earth. It became the first L1 craft to actually fly around the Moon and caused a panic in the West when Jordell Bank Observatory picked up a human voice coming from Zond 5 while still in the vicinity of the Moon. The voice turned out to be a tape-recorded experiment to test the communications system which worked all too well. On the flight back to earth Zond 5 took high-quality photographs of Earth from a distance of 56,000 miles out. The 7K-L1 spacecraft was headed back to Earth, aiming for a narrow corridor of space between 35 Km and 48 Km above the planet; 10 Km too low and it would burn up, 24 Km too high and it would skip out of the atmosphere and never return. Skimming into the atmosphere at 39,240 Km/hr, the decent vehicle of Zond 5 was aimed for entry over the south pole, splashing down in the Indian Ocean as it flew north only about 100 Km from the Russian tracking ships and McMorris. It was a very busy night that September 21,1968 as our three ships hi-tailed it toward where Zond was awaiting final recovery which finally took place after daylight on September 22,but the Russians didn't haul her safely aboard until after McMorris had a chance to photograph and probe her electronically, also our crewmembers were able to collect some chemical and debris samples. For years there has been controversy due to conflicting reports over whether the original planned landing was supposed to be the I.O. or a land recovery in the Soviet Union. I now have absolutely reliable information from Anatoly Zak and based on RKK Energia archive documents that Zond 5 (7K-L1 #9L) was scheduled to land in Kazakhstan, however due to several problems the flight control system was unable to activate the main orbit correction engine. As a result, the ground controllers used a series of firings with the attitude control thrusters to direct the spacecraft into the Indian Ocean. Nice job Ruskies bringing the spacecraft down only 100 Km away from their ships, from a lunar distance of 240,000 miles. I'd call it a real bull's eye! Zond 5 was the first Tran lunar spacecraft to be recovered back on earth and its September 1968 flight was considered a very important success for the Russians. The CIA warned NASA that a Soviet manned circumlunar flight was imminent and that the next launch window for them would be as early as December 1968. APOLLO 8: All three ships headed back to Port Louis for refueling and in our case a little R&R or rest and recreation, otherwise known as liberty, a sailor's favorite vocabulary word. We arrived back in Mauritius on Sept. 26 and commenced our long awaited and deserved liberty. The Russian ship with the recovered spacecraft onboard wasted no time in heading back to sea and Bombay India where Zond 5 would travel overland back to her birthplace in the Soviet Union. Once home, Zond was examined by engineers and scientists who also checked on their onboard experiments and decisions were being made as to their next step toward a manned moon mission. The Soviets were very serious about beating NASA to the moon with a manned spacecraft and it wasn't long after Zond 5 that Zond 6 was launched on November 10, 1968. NASA officials had seen and heard enough about the Soviet Zonds to make a momentous decision, and one day after the launch of Zond 6 on September 11, while the spacecraft was en-route to the Moon, Acting NASA Administrator Paine, made the formal decision to send Apollo 8 to orbit the Moon! The decision to go for the Moon in Apollo 8 was really pushing our luck, gambling that everything will work perfectly. A really big gamble considering that Apollo contained 5,600,000 parts and even if all functioned with 99.9 percent reliability, we could still expect 5,600 defects. At the time Bill Anders told his wife Valerie that he only had a fifty-fifty chance of getting back alive and Christopher Craft, Director of NASA Flight Ops. told Susan Borman that the chances of success were probably fifty-fifty, not zero. Apollo 8 was clearly the most dangerous space mission ever up to that time. The following is a list of some factors considered by NASA in their "Risk versus Gain", for the Apollo 8 mission. 1. Apollo 8 would be the first manned flight of the"
Saturn V "rocket booster. Apollo 8 would be the most dangerous space flight mission of the Apollo series and was scheduled for launch on December 21, 1968. END OF THE RACE: December 8, 1968 "Tyuratam" Space Launch Complex, USSR This day will live on in infamy for the Russian people because this day the USSR lost the Moon Race to the United States. This was the day that Pavel Balyayev was scheduled to be launched to the moon, however bad luck or as some think divine intervention entered into the equation in the form of a technical glitch which showed up in the first stage-booster with less than four hours to go in the countdown. Belyayev was removed from the capsule, and after a thorough inspection of the booster, Zond 7 was launched unmanned. About twenty-seven miles out, the pogo effect set in, and Zond was shaken apart and blown up. Of course in those days only successful Soviet space missions were reported in the media, and so Zond 7 reappeared for an unmanned launch, in August 1969. It was the only Zond flight which could have gotten a crew back to Earth unharmed, but after the US Apollo flights to the Moon, the race had already been won! MISSION ACCOMPLISHED: On 19 October 1968, the good ship USS McMORRIS DE1036, after completing her vital mission for the U.S., steamed out of Port Louis Mauritius for the last time. We were homeward bound via Albany and Sydney Australia, Noumea New Caledonia and Tarawa Gilbert Islands. We arrived back in Pearl Harbor in December, in time to hear Apollo 8 astronauts read the first ten verses from the book of Genesis in the Holy Bible, a fitting ending to our mission and the Space Race! Fredrick Gary Hareland~(e-mail Jan 2006) |
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OPERATION: SENIOR BOWL - D-21B DRONE MISSIONS In light of recent declassification of US spy satellite operations in the 1960's & 1970's i.e. Gambit and Hexagon "Key Hole" programs, you can look up on Wikipedia the declassified D-21B drone missions (Operation: Senior Bowl) and discover four operational missions in the Pacific. One in particular was the third mission on 4 March 1971. In the failed attempt by the AF to recover the only successful mission of the four drone missions conducted, the article mentions a "destroyer" that went in to pluck the satellite out of the water without success, as the satellite sunk before recovery could occur. Well that destroyer was the one and only USS McMorris DE-1036. Jack Shepard, Larry Rimbey & Vic Yanosy and I (all reunion attendees) were aboard the Mac on that mission. These drones were launched from B-52's out of Guam and were intended to take pictures of the Lop Nor Nuclear test site in China. The operations occurred between 9 Nov 1969 to 20 Mar 1971. By the time we were advised to go in and recover the drone satellite a C-130 flew just above our mast top (I was on forward lookout by that time) and two crew members of the aircraft were dangling their legs out of the open ramp of the C-130 and gave a wave to us. Soon after, a P3 Orion from Cubi Point came out and dropped a green dye marker on the satellite. By the time we arrived on the scene, I was among about 20+ people assembled on the fantail where we rigged the portable davit on the starboard side and laid out quite a bit of line (that's a Navy term for rope), and the next critical decision was to determine who would go in the water to wrestle with this canister. A clear and decisive decision was made. Based on a volunteer basis and who had swim gear in their locker determined who made it into the water. Two guy's jumped in. I can see the face of one of them. He was a 3rd class FTG, but I can't recall his name. The other guy..I have no idea. In any event we nuzzled our stern up to the satellite and the line was made fast to it in the water. I remember the discussion on deck was "Who the hell thought we could haul this thing up out of the water with physical manpower?" Seemed impossible, and as we began heaving around (Another Navy term for pulling on the rope), the line slipped off the satellite. The ship slipped into reverse and attempted to gain a position on the canister when much to our surprise we hit the thing and it did what any satellite would do when clobbered by a big ship...it sank! Not sure how many career aspirations went down with that satellite that day, but we now know that shot was the only successful one of the four conducted. If you read the wikipedia article, you would know the 4th shot wound up in a trash heap in the People's Republic of China and was eventually put on display in a museum of some sorts. I'm sure by today's standards, that technology back then was on the level of tinker toys, but the cold war remained a serious game for some time. The amount of print on all of the US MIlitary spy satellite programs of the Cold War era now fills volumes, and Mac sailors were not only involved in a some of these missions, but many others besides just missile/satellite programs. The sad part is we were never given credit for all those days at sea and recognized for our vigilance and devotion to duty. The 65' crew members took their efforts to the shores of Vietnam, providing gunfire support to our troops on land. The 72' crew also spent time in Vietnam. The early 60's crew members did Taiwan Patrol duty, and the 68' crew members had their destiny with the Russian Zond Space program. Many more missions went unnoticed, but with no less importance. The Mac and her crew were faithful to their duty and can be proud of their efforts. Besides, what ship do you know would be the only Navy ship in Subic Bay and owned Olongapo, when the Kitty Hawk pulls in with Peso's blowing out her port holes and thinks they were going to take over the town? You can only imagine how well the Mac defended her position. Skip Reynolds ~ (Facebook, Aug 2012) |
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Thanks, Scott