A Collision At Sea

That is a picture of the USS Oriskany (CVA-34) that I took 50 years ago yesterday, which would make it October 3, 1967. I took the picture shortly before we came alongside her to refuel, unrep we called it.

At the time, I was the CIC officer on a navy destroyer, the USS Hopewell (DD-681), and for the previous two days we had been steaming in company with two other destroyers. The three of us were providing protection for the Oriskany, an aircraft carrier, and we were on our way from Sasebo, Japan to Yankee Station in the Tonkin Gulf. We had been maintaining a speed of 27 knots for almost all that time. At that rate of speed, our old World War II era destroyer was running low on fuel. So our little convoy slowed down to let the Oriskany refuel us. We were just entering the South China Sea, about midway between Taiwan and the northern-most island of the Philippines.

When it was our turn, we came alongside the Oriskany to take on fuel. It was around 3:30 on a beautiful sunny afternoon when the two fuel hoses were slid over to us on the high wires that we had rigged between our two ships, and we began receiving fuel fore and aft. As the Combat Information Center officer, the CIC officer, my duty during unreps was essentially to do nothing other than sit in CIC along with some of the men of my division. Other than one man watching the long range radar, no one else had any significant function to perform.

Most of the men were gathered around the chart table, where our chief petty officer was presiding with his tales of what it was like in the OLD NAVY, as if being on one of the navy's oldest functioning destroyers wasn't old navy enough. I was over near the electronic countermeasures equipment, sitting on a tall stool. I don't know what the men were talking about, but I was day-dreaming about my pregnant wife back in San Diego. You see, that day also happened to be our first wedding anniversary, and yet we were thousands of miles apart.

Now I want to interrupt my little story here and mention something that military families already know quite well. You see, whenever you hear someone thanking a service member for their sacrifices, if you haven't been in the military yourself, you may think that with the big new bases and modern ships that their physical sacrifices are minimal. But the REAL sacrifice service members and their families make isn't physical, it is the long separations from one another that are the hardest sacrifices. And when there is also the danger of war involved, the mental pain of separations is even greater.

So there I was, lost in a melancholy reverie, after we had been alongside and receiving fuel from the Oriskany for about a half an hour, the 1MC ship-wide loudspeaker system came alive, and we heard the voice of our captain shouting, "STAND BY FOR COLLISION!" Before we could even begin to comprehend what he was saying, there was a huge crunching sound as we hit the Oriskany's starboard side, and then all of the lights in CIC went out. Along with most of the men, I was thrown to the floor and for a brief moment, until our emergency lighting came on, I was as afraid as I've ever been. We had no idea what had happened.

I'll spare you the minute details, but basically what had happened was that the big electric motor that drove our huge rudder, and it was a single rudder ship, well, that motor dropped off line and caused us to loose steering. But if you've ever been on the bridge of a ship during an unrep, you know that even a few degrees change in the helm doesn't kick in immediately. And so it took a half a minute or so before the people on the bridge realized that they had no steering. By the time they understood that they had lost control of the ship, there was no time left for an emergency disconnect of the fuel hoses.

We scrapped down the side of the Oriskany, rocking into it an back again, throwing us around, and in the dark of CIC I'm sure that I wasn't the only one who was wondering if my end was near. On deck, I later learned, there was a hectic race to get out of the way of the stretching fuel hoses and the big wires holding them up. The collision was so violent that it tripped our boilers off line, causing us to lose all power. And as we bounced down her side, dead in the water, fuel began to gush out of the hoses as the wires snapped and great chunks of our super structure were twisted and torn off. Fortunately, the hole that was punctured in our hull was far enough above our waterline that we could proceed on our own to Subic Bay in the Philippines for repairs before returning to the Tonkin Gulf. Amazingly, there were no significant injuries among our crew.

Now there are two more little pieces of that story that I still have to tell. The first is the fact that, only moments before we collided with the carrier, she had raised her aircraft elevator that had been lowered when we first came alongside. Had that elevator still been down when we had the collision, it would have scraped off most of the superstructure of my ship right at the deck line . . . including the Combat Information Center where I had been so lazily dreaming only a few minutes earlier. The raising of that elevator may have saved my life.

But there is another thing that raising that elevator brought about. Had it still been down when we hit, not only would it have scraped our deck clean, it would have caused enough damage to the Oriskany that it, too, would have had to break off from it's mission at Yankee Station and head to Subic Bay for repairs. As it was, we sustained most of the damage, and the Oriskany managed to do their less extensive repairs while still at sea and continue on with her mission.

Twenty-three days later, while out on Yankee Station, the Oriskany launched another of its daily air strikes on North Viet Nam, but one of it's pilots didn't return on that day. He was shot down and held a prisoner for the next five years. His name is John McCain.

Many years later our paths crossed once again, actually it was our swords that crossed that time, but that's another story.

The photo below is of the USS Hopewell (DD-681).