Armed Forces Day #1 (From Eric Beheim)

In November 1971, as a newly-minted Ensign, I reported aboard the aircraft carrier USS RANGER, where, for the next three years, I served (in a non-musical capacity) as one of the ship’s officers. Late in 1972, the RANGER made a combat cruise to Vietnam during the final months of that conflict. There is always a certain degree of risk associated with being onboard a warship operating in a combat zone. The closest I ever came to personally being “in harm’s way” occurred during an 18-hour period in mid-December 1972 while we were operating in the Gulf of Tonkin. It all started during a night-time underway replenishment while a supply ship was steaming along side, passing over fuel oil and supplies via a network of hoses, steel cables and ropes which connected the two ships together. In the middle of this operation, the RANGER’s gyro-compass stopped working and she began drifting into the side of the supply ship. At the time, I was with a winch team working on a small sponson (a sort of balcony) jutting out from the side of the ship. The order was given for an “emergency breakaway” and, as the ships began to draw apart, hoses, cables and ropes began parting, snapping back with terrific force all around us. (The quick-thinking Chief Petty Officer on my team cut a rope that was attached to our sponson and it parted with a sound like a cannon going off.) Then, the next morning, just as I was getting dressed, an announcement was made that there was a Class Bravo (oil) fire in the engine room directly below my stateroom. Shortly afterwards, General Quarters was called away. By the time I reached my GQ station up in the hanger bay, smoke was pouring out from down below and the plane crews were working desperately to move aircraft out onto the ship’s huge elevators so that they could be taken up to the relative safety of the flight deck. For most of the day, RANGER was dead in the water while the ship’s fire teams worked to contain the fire and put it out. 24 hours later, RANGER resumed combat operations using its three good engines.