It's Not Easy Being Green

Of course that title makes no sense unless I were green. But according to common folklore, radiation makes you glow a faint greenish hue. And God know's I've been up to my neck in nuclear power these past weeks, getting ready for my final boards that will prove that I have learned enough to go to the next school. And I thought 5 1/2 years in college was bad...

So, to make up for my intransigence, I will begin with what I promised last time: 20mm guns. This photo from a page I found today, http://www.savetheptboatinc.com/ shows a single 20mm mount. The nine mounts (three forward, four midships and two aft) aboard SLATER are twin mounts. Designed by the Swiss during the closing days of World War I and firing explosive shells, the 20mm was a common AA mount whose effectiveness was diminished only by the increasing speeds of aircraft. With an effective range of ~2000 yards, the 20mm gunner would have only the eights or so it took a kamakazi to travel those 2000 yards before impact to destroy it. But the situation is not as dire as it sounds, for the 20mms were the last line of AA defense.

Previously one of the mounts has been really done over in style, and we are in the process of working on a second mount. The gun here has been removed from its mount for work. (Al Vanderzee gives one of his award-winning tours in the background.) Of course the plan is to get the gun looking good, not functioning. The steel plug welded in the barrels of the 2os before the ship was returned to us would make those efforts fruitless anyway.

The image to the right is details the top of the 20, where the magazine would sit. The magazines containted 60 rounds of ammuntion apiece, and would be passed belowdecks when empty to be refilled in a clipping room and then returned full to the gun for subsequent re-emptying.

To be honest, work had been weighing upon my mind quite a bit over the past few weeks, and it showed. My tours were not quite up to snuff on Thursday, and on Friday, I asked if there were any odd jobs to be done around; and of course there were. I was tasked first with notching some covers that were to be screwed to the top of the ammo lockers located on the centerline of the O-1 deck. The fabricators who made them put the notches in the wrong place, and to make them sit correctly, that problem had to be fixed. Of course I had no way to fill in the incorrect notches, so we had to settle for making more notches where they should have been.

And the tools of the trade: the hacksaw for making the cuts, the channel locks to wiggle the tab out, the file for removing the burrs and rough edges, and the coffe because, well, because I'm in the Navy.

The rest of the day, honestly, was spent doing a little piddling around, doing odd jobs, replacing a valve that I had cleaned previously, organizing things, and the like. I got a brush up on the ins and outs of CIC, took the covers off some radar sets and poked around, and then took care of the banging, scraping sound that had been annoying me most of the day.

The day had been windy, and the signal flags could have been starched for all I knew. One of the radio antennas on the port side had been rattled and twisted loose from the turnbuckle that held it in place just below the O-3 level (three floors up from the main deck). The antennas are fixed on the yardarm that crosses the mast, and on the side of the superstructure. The turnbuckle had to be reattached. Sounds easy? Well, no matter how we tried, when we leaned over the rail of the O-3 level, we were still a good two feet away from the turnbuckle. The wing on the O-2 level was a good 10 feet away. There was only one option: someone had to climb up two stories of superstructure. You'll never guess who did it. Those who do not like heights, you've been warned.

Just another day in the life of a SLATER volunteer. Wouldn't trade it for the world.