CVAN-65

I want to tell a little story which happened to me aboard the USS Enterprise CVAN-65. The year was 1972 and it was early summertime in San Diego. I had already made one cruise to Vietnam and the ship was getting ready to make its last cruise of the Vietnam War. So we were off the coast of San Diego for a couple of days of REFTRA or Refresher Training. During these few days we were undergoing various readiness drills and being graded by inspectors. A couple of days into the training we were bored with being "at sea", in this case sitting in San Diego harbor looking at the city lights at night. Some one got the idea to show a movie in our homemade lounge for the bow cats. Soon a projector was found and a movie obtained from the entertainment dept. The movie---Woodstock! Around a dozen of us set up a sheet for a screen and brought in chairs and got stoned on pot. Now we had a great place to get stoned without getting caught. To describe it I have to get a little technical on your ass. The catapults are basically a double barreled shotgun where the bullet(piston) never leaves the barrel. The 2 pistons, one in each barrel are connected thru a slot in the top of the barrel by the shuttle to which the device that connects to the airplane is attached. The pistons are driven down the barrel by steam pressure. The nuclear reactors make steam and send it up to a steam reciever tank which is pressurized to the correct pressure for the weight of the aircraft so it can obtain around 150mph as it leaves the flight deck. Our lounge was a side room to one of the steam reciever tanks. I'm only guessing but these were huge tanks and probably held 5-10k gals of steam. Because of the temperature of the steam in these tanks there was an exhaust fan which pulled the hot air from the top of the tank and blew it out the side of the ship thru a vent.

Well, one of us stoners discovered on our 1971 cruise to Vietnam that we could sit inside the vent space and get stoned. The air was blown thru the center of the space and we sat on a ledge around the edge. We could fit 5-6 guys in there easily. The smokey air blew out the side and no-one could tell from where it was coming. Once all was ready we turned down the ships intercom, the 1MC, and started watching the movie as the sun set. A couple of guys showed up late and went down to get thier buzz on in the fan room. I can still remember as I was sitting up front by the screen and Leon Russell was wailing out Freedom..Freedom...as the projector was at full volume, when we felt more than heard the ship shake. As we discussed it to us it felt like the ship had just launched patrol ready aircraft from the Waist catapults. About a minute later there was another shake. Again it was about the timing for the second ready aircraft to be launched. Since it wasn't our turn to be launching anything we just kept on watching the flick. Suddenly there were 2 very close spaced shaking booms and the late comers came flying up out of the fan room yelling "The bow is on fire!, the bow is on fire!" Someone shut off the projector and I reached behind the sheet and turned up the 1MC intercom. Suddenly we could all hear the Airboss saying that aircraft 401, 402 are on fire on the bow. Well, we scrambled our asses up on the flight deck. I was the last to get up there because I was farthest from the door. I ran up in the dark of the night and got on the nearest firehose that was fully charged. There was a tremendous heat and wind blowing on us but we could see no fire! None of us had our safety gear on, we were just in pants and t-shirts. After about 30-45 seconds in my befuddled mind I turned around and asked the guy behind me, who did have all his safety gear on, what was happening. He told me it was a drill---whew! The heat and wind was coming from an aircraft whose engine was running. I decided I didn't need to be there as we would lose points being without the right gear. So I told the guy infront of me that it was a drill and I went off the flight deck and back to the movie. Word passed up the hose that it was a drill and most of the rest of the guys also came back and we started up the movie again. So we are sitting there grooving out when the leader of the #1 catapult came in and shut off the movie. He then asked us who turned in the battle damage report for the Bow cats? We all faked like we didn't even know there was a drill going on. He thought it was unbelievable that none of us knew anything and did nothing. But he believed us and turned the projector on and left. We turned it off and had a discussion as to how we were going to proceed. We all agreed to stick to our story! On again went the movie. Maybe 20 minutes went by and the #1 cat leader came back in. This time he was pissed!!!!! It seems that one of the guys watching the movie when the 1MC was turned up did the right thing. He ran out and down the catwalk into the catapult room grabbed his safety gear ran out the other side of the ship and up onto the flight deck. Once he got there an inspector grabbed him and told him he was dead. So he laid there and they picked him up and took him to sickbay and processed him. When the drill was over he returned to the catapult room and proceeded to tell the #1 cat leader his story. Mentioning where he was at the start of the drill and how "everyone knew" Like I said he was pissed and came to see us, we stuck to our story though and said that so and so must have been at the back of the room and was the only one who heard the drill. Because we had a variety of rank in our room we were grudgingly believed and once again the projector was turned on as the cat leader went away. Quickly it was off again and we talked it over and the highest ranking of us went over to the cat leader and told him what happened. We figured we wouldn't get into trouble as he was using uppers all the time and we could turn him in if he turned us in. We all got away with it and enjoyed the fan room for the whole cruise of Vietnam in 72-73.