A hat was required!! So...I wore one.
The Bunker-Ramo CP677 computer, one of my major engineering and maintenance responsibilities aboard the TAGS.
This is the machine that's part of SASS in Sonar. The cabinet on the left is the extended memory cabinet.
The front cover has been modified with plexiglass-covered cutouts to provide visibility of the register lights while maintaining cooling effectiveness.
We all loved to watch the register lights blink.
A description of this modification is in my October 1972 Cruise Report.
These photos are from the Cruise Book Pasteups, and originally accompanied a photo montage of the Bowditch's engine room in the April 1972 Cruise Book.
Dennis "Flash" Johnsey and I traveled by bicycle, using two old bikes I found in one of the holds and refurbished.
See Flash's albums from Paris, Notre Dame and The Louvre here.
This is a collection of crew photos from my 1 ½ years aboard the USNS Bowditch as Bunker-Ramo tech rep. Barry Bethel (in photo 1) replaced me in June of 1973.
Some shots of ship’s spaces.
The transformation of #2 Hold into a real gym. This effort started during the yard period in Falmouth late in 1971, just before I joined the ship’s company. The last of it got finished at sea on our way to Rota in February of 1972. Playing just about any kind of game down there was a real trip in a heaving sea. Jump up as the ship was heaving up, and you might find yourself 10’ off the deck as it hove down.
At sea on fair days, we rigged up a skeet thrower on the fantail and wasted many, many clay pigeons, hours, and shotgun shells shooting skeet. If you got good, you got very, very good as the ship heaved, swayed, and surged. Most of us just got bad.
Note the ear cotton in these pics.
We inported in
In the early 1970’s, the Bowditch
enjoyed numerous inports in southern
During many of our Southampton inports, we ventured
in groups outside the city to other parts of
: In 1972, Mark “The Dildo” Comstock, Dave Strause, and I started a
series of race driving lessons at the
The School used Formula Fords to train us. These were open-wheeled, homulagated racers that used a tuned Cosworth engine and frame design. A pretty tight fit for a 6’ 5” tech rep, but worth the squeeze. There’s just nothing like the feeling of winding around corners at 120 mph with your butt-cheeks only 4” off the ground. The cars were set up with limiters on their tachs, so students could be gradually allowed to go faster and faster through the course as their skills increased.
I left the Bowditch in
A few shots of the crew of "The Mike".
Ron Hauser, a great friend from our Bunker Ramo office in
We spent a month or
so in the yards at Subic Bay near
Some shots taken from and around the Michelson in the Japanese theater.
Some shots taken from and around the Michelson. I don’t have many pics of the navigation and sonar spaces from my days on the Bowditch because of security. The rules were a little looser on the Mike.
A collection of photos from
my visit to the SS Lane
Victory in
The official SS Lane Victory site is here: http://www.lanevictory.org/index.php
The S.S. Lane Victory is a nationally recognized historic landmark that now serves as a living museum and memorial to the service of Merchant Marine sailors and Navy Armed Guardsmen over the years. Several times each summer she sails from her berth at the port of San Pedro out to Catalina Island on one of her "Victory At Sea" cruises.
The Lane offers two very complete and interesting museums aboard. One is in Hold No 2 and the other in No 4. The museums cover the Lane’s specific history along with lots of cool exhibits of WWII, Korean War, and Vietnam conflicts. The museums alone would’ve been worth the trip.
