Department: ALL Author: Era: 1975 Date: 12/31/-31

Chaplain Department: Engr Author: Annonymous Era: 1980 Date: 08/15/04 We were cleaning the condensers in the Engine Room or maybe some other heat exchangers, I forget - anyway someone found a good sized fish that was pretty much intact. This guy (I forget who) thought it was worth keeping so he stuffed it in a rag and took it up to the mess decks when we broke for chow. On the main deck he ran into the chaplain and after talking for a bit, pulled the rotten fish out of the rag and started eating it. That might explain why we so rarely saw the chaplain down in the engine room.

The Noodle Gang Department: Rx Author: Peter Era: 1982 Date: 11/04/04 During my time there was a group of 6 RM-Divers named "The Noodle Gang" - their nucleus consisted of: Pete, Cal, Wags, Charlie, PJ, Major-Mike - and then a few of us "hangers-on" who enjoyed the free entertainment these miscreants provided. I believe it was in Naples when against my better judgment, I went out steaming with these guys. I can't guarantee it was Naples, or even Italy for that matter... as a lot of the liberty ports blended together in an opiated fog. This particular port visit we were required to stay in uniform the first day - subsequent days we were allowed to dress in civvies. So of course the first thing the Noodles did was change into civilian attire. Normally I would have but on this particular visit, I thought it would be fun to decorate my uniform with all of my high school swimming and diving medals. After an hour of slamming down beers at a furious pace we commenced to prowling the streets. Turning the corner on one particular street, we stumbled upon a Communist rally... a crowd of 300-400 citizens replete with red banners, flags, etc. At the front of which their leader was giving an animated speech. We had approached from the rear so we were somewhat inconspicuous - which in my mind seemed quite beneficial as we would be able to fairly easily slink away and no one would notice. I'm not sure what plane of reality the Noodles inhabited - but they saw things rather differently... after due consideration, it occurred to them that all 5 of them should march up to the front of the crowd, stand by the main speaker and start singing "God Bless America"! Thank God the Caribanari were there (the Caribanari being a jackbooted, quasi-Gestapo, Italian Police force). After just a few notes these guys quickly herded the Noodles away from the crowd and into the welcoming arms of the Shore Patrol. The head shore patrol (some flavor of Commander) started discussing with the poor Noodle gang how displeased he was with them.. I come rambling up and offer my services to the Commander to escort the Noodles out of there (remember I am in full regalia with my numerous medals) so as I was an E6 the shore patrol mistakenly assumed not only was I responsible but that I would somehow have control over the Noodles. That was definitely the highlight of the evening - I don't remember for sure, but I think we polished off the evening by rumbling with some jar-heads.

Why I left the Navy Department: Supply Author: Mike Mancuso Era: 1978 Date: 11/11/04 Not much of a sea story, and it's not funny, but it's the reason I left the Navy as an E6, on my way to E7, after 7 years in the Navy. During one of Ike's training cruises in late 77 or early 78, I was a rover during one of the very boring battle station drills. I was roving around in my assigned section on deck 3, carrying all that shit we were required to carry, when I came across a chief standing over a deck hatch. The hatch led straight down to an auxiliary boiler room. Oh great, lucky me! I was an E6, so I wasn't very intimidated by chiefs. Anyway, I just acknowledged him with a nod and proceeded to open the hatch. The chief said loudly "Heavy black smoke!", then asked what that meant. I replied a bravo fire. He just nodded and I proceeded to climb down the hatch. He said "No, you just close the hatch and report the damage." I replied that it was a manned space. He told me that I have to assume that they are all dead. Shit! I knew that if I was down there, I wouldn't want anyone to assume that I was dead! I also knew that he was right, and the moment sticks in my head because I knew right then and there that it was time to be a civilian.... too much reality. Almost every time we went to sea (and all we did while I was aboard was sea trials, Gitmo training, and bomb PR) someone got killed. A couple of months later the supply department commander had me in his office for the reenlistment spiel. "Bailing Mancuso?"..."Yes sir!"..."Any point in talking to you?"..."No sir!"... "Dismissed." Once my mind was made up, I put in a chit to go for a ride in a Tomcat. I was precom, was getting out, and wanted to experience what that ship was all about. It went up the chain of command and came back disapproved. They said I would have to go to ejection seat and high altitude training, and they weren't going to train me just to give me a thrill...unless of course I wanted to re-enlist? (See above!) So I put in another chit, asking to ride in one of the choppers. It went up the chain of command, disapproved, until it got to the XO, who wrote on it "Why not?....approved!" I was given a time and ready-room to report to. The scariest time I EVER felt on that ship was when I walked across the active flight deck with the chopper crew to their machine. Watching from the island as we all did hundreds of times, one still had no appreciation for that active flight deck until you were actually on it. Holy shit! I've tried to relate to people who have never served just how dangerous a ship at sea is, even in peace time. I was never in a dangerous position or in danger myself, but the whole ship felt it when someone was killed. Anyone reading this knows exactly what I mean. And I've also tried to relate to people just how utterly, totally fucking boring it can be at sea; work, sleep, eat, shit, shower, hope for mail. I have been off the ship and out of the Navy for 26 years now, and to this day I still have dreams about that ship. Mike Mancuso, DP1 - S7 Division, 76-78

Captain's Inspection Department: Rx Author: Peter Era: 1979 Date: 11/12/04 On my first day in the Reactor Plant, I remember seeing a mechanic wrestling with a heavy drawer full of rusty, dirty tools... The sailor was dressed in tatters, very filthy, and had one of the worst attitudes I had ever encountered. I remember thinking to myself, "My God, is this how I'll be spending the next 4 1/2 years?" Of corse things always turn out considerably better than we fear - and most of my tenure on board were not nearly so dismal - though there were times in the next 4 1/2 yrs when I was just as filthy and had just as bad an attitude. He turned out to be pleasant enough, I stood a couple of training watches with him. He was getting out in the next couple of weeks and consequently had a severe case of short-timers attitude. About 4 days before his EAOS (discharge) we had a huge personnel inspection - might have been the old man or maybe just the Dept. Head. As his final F*ck Y*u salute to the navy, this guy shows up for the inspection wearing white anti-C gloves and had put his shoes on the wrong feet. I don't know about the gloves.... but technically, I think he was well within his rights regarding the shoes... I know of no Navy Reg that states you must wear your shoes on the proper feet.... Anyway, our MMCM did a pre-inspection before the old man got there.... Kicked short-timer out of the ranks so the captain never got to see him. I don't remember the guy's name but he had red hair, got out in '79 and was a 2-plant RM-Mechanic.

Junior Department: Rx Author: Peter Era: 1983 Date: 11/14/04 This story is about a guy in our division named "Junior" - It might be safe to use his real name since I believe he ended up in a federal prison on some sort of cocaine rap - so this story would be the least of his problems... but just to be safe... we'll call him "Junior". Jr. was a nice enough guy, and he must have had some smarts to be a Nuke - but this guy was not very street smart. First of all, he reenlisted under the Star program - which was a bribe the Navy paid you to reenlist for an additional 2 years. The bonus/bribe was $18,000 which, if one had the maturity to manage - could have been parlayed into a substantial profit (I know one sailor who bought Chrysler stock with his and made a killing) - but most 20 year olds when they get this kind of money, try their damndest to shit can it as quickly as possible. We had one "Star Baby", as we called these reenlistees, who squandered his bonus probably inside of a month - he would light cigarettes with $5.00 bills, bought a whole ton of toys (remote controll cars, laser discs, etc.) - then there were the poor bastards who sent their bonus home to their wives only to find out later that she had blown it all on drugs and her motorcycle boyfriend and left him while he was on the 9 month IO cruise. Junior was one of these types - His preferred method of whit canning his bonus was to fall in love with a bar-girl/hooker who worked in a dive just off base. He dumped his entire bonus into this greedy slut's hands... bought her crap, took out a $million life insurance policy on himself with her as the beneficiary, and tons of other stuff. - After all his money was gone - she more or less lost interest in him... - pretty sad. Now that we've been introduced to Jr. I'll explain how he got the nickname "Waka Waka". Poor Jr. was standing Feed Pump watch (I think that was the highest he qualified in 2 years) and lay down on the deckplates to take a nap... most of us when we took naps would squirrel our way out of the open (the overhead, bilge, etc.) but not Jr. - and to his credit, it may have been more passing out drunk than brazenly taking a nap. Anyway along comes some flavor of khaki (chief, officer,..) and catches him. Poor Jr. gets de-Nuked, busted, and transfered to another ship. - Jr. kept in touch for awhile - and let us know that his current shipmates had named him "Waka Waka" because that's the sound that PacMan (the video game from the '80s) makes as he roams around the screen. The hookers in the Philipines had named him that due to his penchant for performing cunninlinus on them. The latest I knew - Jr. was in the federal pen. But I have a feeling - if he could stomach going down on a whore, he'll be able to take anything they throw at him.

Ike Bites Department: Rx Author: Peter Era: 1982 Date: 11/19/04 As I'm sure you all remember, When your watch relief showed up (in my case usually late - sorry about that guys..) you had to sign the logs over to him. The oncoming watch then signed into the logs with the statement, "Relieved the watch, conditions as before". After the oncoming watch had spent an hour or two zoning out, he would actually get up off his ass to take a tour of the watch station to find out what kind of a can of worms the previous watch had left him...(and fill in the logs he was supposed to have been taking for the past two hours). On the midwatch, however, you had to write the complete status of your watchstation - every so often, a watchstander would try to get by with "split, crit, same old shit" (If you're not a Nuke you won't understand that) - But that invariably ended up with having to rewrite the entire logs. On Charging Station watch especially one had to practically write a book on the midwatch, primarily because of the Reserve Feed manifold configuration. One night, petty officer Jeff J_____ wrote the status in a mixture of upper and lowercase letters. - No one who reviewed the logs noticed anything amiss except for the Group Sup who noticed that the choice of upper and lowercase letters was not random. When the logs were held up at a distance, one could clearly see the letters IB (for Ike Bites) were formed by the pattern of the uppercase letters. I thought this was tremendously creative - but unfortunately, Petty Officer J____ was rewarded with the opportunity of copying the logs over again.

Flight Deck Department: Air Author: Peter Era: 1980 Date: 11/21/04 After the 9 month IO cruise, The Independance finally shows up to relieve us. After turnover, we start heading south to round the Cape of Good Hope on our way home. The IKE was steaming at a pretty fast clip all the way home. I don't remember any flight ops on the journey home - maybe there were but most days the flight deck was open to the whole ship. One time we were up there we were steaming against about a 40 knot head wind and the IKE itslef must have been doing 20+ knots... (I think we were at ahead flank if anyone cares to make the conversion...) Anyway this made the apparent wind some 60 knots. If you look at the flight deck, you'll see that about 10 feet below the deck is a net-like structure called the "cat-walk" designed to catch airdales who have been blown overboard by jet blast. There is one section of the flight deck not protected with this cat-walk and that is the protrusion on the starboard bow - As I recall a 15 foot overhang. So - here we are steaming home with an apparent head wind of 60-70 knots which was kind of fun in that one could lean forward at a 45 degree angle into the wind. I thought it would be fun to go to the very front of the flight deck and lean out over the water (a la Leonardo D'acaprio in the Titanic... but without the railing) So we tried it for awhile but the catwalk underneath was obstructing our view of the water. The logical next step was to venture out to the protrusion. 3 of us were leaning out at 45 degfree angles over the bow of the ship looking 100+ feet down at the water below. If we had miscalculated the least amount, not only would we have had to contend with the 100 foot fall into the ocean but also the prospect of getting run over by a 90,000 ton vessel. Our fun was spoiled when a chief came over and told us to get the hell away from there. What's incredible about this tale is that you would fully expect sailors to do dumb-shit stuff like this when drunk... but here we were, stone cold sober, only afew weeks away from reuniting with our loved ones... and still doing clulessly stupid things like this...

Toilet Training a Sailor 1 Department: Rx Author: Peter Era: 1982 Date: 12/04/04 Down in the Reactor Room temperatures could reach the 120 degree range for stretches at a time. This was in part due to how damn hot it was in the IO but also due to all of the steam leaks thanks to us being to lazy to do the appropriate maintenance. Anyway, thanks to all the heat, we were dehydrated enough that mostly, we could stand a 6 hour watch without having to visit the head. However if the need arose, down at CTG Lower Level, there were some condenser vent funnels, groin height, and surrounded by structures that afforded some degree of privacy. After one finished urinating one would "flush" the toilet by venting the condenser into the drain. I'm sure other watchstanders throughout the ship used similar makeshift arrangements to use the head without having to get a 5 minute watch relief. Probably throughout the ship, sailors were pissing into just about anything that would convey their urine out of their compartment and who gave a fuck where! - For all I know they were using sounding tubes for JP5, Lube Oil, and maybe even potable water

Toilet Training a Sailor 2 Department: Rx Author: Peter Era: 1982 Date: 12/04/04 In the Reactor Room - if you had to defecate, you would line a bucket with a plastic bag and then crawl down into the bilge to take your shit. We Nukes were at least that couth... On my first SSTG watch over in the Engineroom, I remember one of the watchstanders having to go clean up a pile of shit in the Rx Fill Pump room... Some vulgar animal had just walked into that compartment and taken a shit right on the floor. We had one fellow (Herb H.) in the Reactor room who was down in the bilge, squatting over a bucket - when the Reactor Officer came wandering around on one of his rare tours - Poor Herb - it's a bit unnerving trying to pinch one off when a commander is glaring down at you through the deckplates... That might explain why poor Herb never made it to E-6.