You Just Had To Say We Were Ahead of Schedule...

I was reading over my last post on this blog, and I realized that even though I've only been in the Navy a very short time, I'm already coming up with some interesting stories about my experiences. Or at least, I find them interesting. Recall my last post, where I mentioned the Gun Line and the oldest 5-inch gun in the fleet, the one that we get to mess around with.

Last week, our class was supposed to take PT - a Performance Test - to demonstrate our knowledege of sequence of operation and various modes of control for the gun. Since we only have one gun, only one person can do their test at a time. Guess who got to go first? Yep, yours truly. So I was cruising through the test, doing pretty well, feeling good about things. Halfway through, while demonstrating the auto-fire sequence, the gun decides that it's going to break on me. We struggled with it all day, but it simply didn't want to cooperate.

So, guess who got to fix the gun? Yep, yours truly, along with the rest of the class. We got to dig around inside the massive mess of hydraulic lines, pistons, cables, and piping to figure out what was wrong. We finally concluded that the problem was a piston that had to do with transferring rounds from the loader drum into the hoist that takes the round up to the breech and barrel of the gun. It wasn't latching all the way when it was supposed to, so the gun would freeze, since it doesn't like blowing its operators up.

With the instructor watching us and offering helpful hints, we rebuilt the part, reinstalled it, and finally managed to get the gun working again after a lengthy process of draining and then refilling the lower accumulator system, which involved hydraulic fluid - lots of hydraulic fluid. After a week of messing with the thing, it's now working again, and we were able to take our PTs. Guess who got to go first again? Yep, yours truly.

But that's a whole different story.

Now We Get to the Fun Part... Right?

Well folks, I'm sorry I haven't posted in some time. The last time I posted, I was enjoying some leave time at home. When I got done with leave, I had to leave my desktop behind, and as such, no longer had the address for this blog in my favorites, and I sorta forgot about it. But, enough of my excuses. I'm sure you're all just dying to hear about all the nonsense I've been up to in the past couple of months.

Before I left "A" school in Great Lakes, IL, I had orders to go to Norfolk, Virginia. Not surprisingly, the orders were a little vague, and I got the impression that I was to be joining the crew of my ship. The ship, DDG-99, also known as the USS Farragut, is currently what is known as a "precom", or a ship that has not yet been commissioned. This is largely due to the fact that it is brand new, and is not even done being built yet. So I assumed I was going to be joining the crew, and perhaps the ship would meet us there and get properly outfitted.

Well, I was partially correct. I did in fact meet part of the crew. There were only about 60 or so people there, of what will be a 300 person crew. I was only there for a short time, when I was informed that I was going to be shipped out to another nearby base, Dam Neck, for the 5-inch Mk 45 "C" School. The reason for this, I was told, is that I will be filling what is known as a "First Class" billet, in other words, a job that is normally done by a Petty Officer First Class. Well, I'm not a petty officer yet, I'm still a Seaman. So, if I can pull the job off well, this will look really good in my record. I'll just still be getting paid as a little guy, though.

So now I am at Dam Neck, a total of two moves since I got on leave. So far, I'm having fun. I spent the entire last week down on the "Gun Line," working with an actual working model of the 5-inch gun. The thing is the oldest commissioned gun of its kind in the fleet, and it bleeds hydraulic fluid like you wouldn't believe, but when it works, it's fun. And when I wasn't working on the gun, I was eating pizza, playing football, or beating all the other guys in poker with their shiny new poker chips they got.

And people ask me why I signed on to be a Gunner's Mate...

Boot Camp

I thought I would take a small portion of the free time that I have while on leave, and actually make a post or two. Actually, I hope to make several, but we'll see. You know how it is when you come home after being gone for a long time; there are so many things you want to do, people you have to see, and places you need to go.

Being that Navy Boot Camp was one of the first major experiences in my Naval career, it's probably a good idea to go ahead and talk about that first. I won't get greatly detailed on it, as it's not really very interesting unless you're actually doing it. And if I happen to remember any specific stories further down the road, I'll be sure to post them. Unfortunately, when you're going through Boot Camp, you're thoroughly exhausted, extremely busy, and you have very little actual free time. As a result, when you get done with Boot Camp, you find out that your memory of it is not as great as you might have thought it would be. But I'll do what I can.

First, I suppose I should cover a few details about what happened before Boot Camp. I actually signed up for the Navy on 3 June, 2004, and then spent the next 9 months in the Delayed Entry Program (DEP). During that time, I worked at Safeway and then later when back to college for a semester. I was also responsible for learning as much as I could about the Navy (they gave me a booklet of info, much of which I had to memorize), including the 11 General Orders of a Sentry, Rank and Recognition, etc. Then, finally, I shipped off to Boot Camp on 15 March, 2005.

First, let me say that Boot Camp was not as hard as I thought it would be. I thought it would be much more demanding physically than it really was. I'm not complaining of course. Even though I had run and worked out regularly before shipping out to Boot Camp, I still wasn't in that great of shape. The physcial regimen in Boot Camp was demanding, but it was not overwhelming, and it was just hard enough to get me in good shape without really straining me too much. As long as I put effort into the workouts, I didn't have any trouble passing the Physical Fitness Assesments (PFAs). Eventually, I was able to do 93 situps in two minutes, 50 pushups in two minutes, and run a mile and a half in 10:57. Not bad, considering I was doing 60, 42, 13:30 before Boot Camp.

The mental aspect of Boot Camp was harder, and over time, I learned that this was intentional. Today's Navy does have need of strong Sailors, but it also needs smart Sailors, people who can think for themselves, solve problems, work with others, and overcome their general difficulties in order to find the motivation they need to succeed and get ahead. A motivated Sailor who listens well to instructions and yet can barely pass a PFA will get a lot farther than one who smokes the PFA and yet can't pay attention in class.

And yes, there were a lot of classes in Boot Camp. On average, I think we spent about 12 hours a week in one class or another, ranging from Naval history, to anti-terrorism, to uniform and ettiquette standards. They were all designed to give us very basic knowledge that we would need as Sailors. We also did a great deal of marching (which paid off in the end, with my division being one of the few in our group that earned both drill flags), and we also did other hands-on activities like fire-fighting (with real fires), live-fire exercises with the Beretta M9 9mm and the Mossberg 500 12-gauge shotgun, and line handling. And then there was the ever popular gas chamber, where we were exposed to tear gas and made to recite our name, rate, and division number... or pretty much whatever we could manage to howl out at that moment, as most of us were not able to really talk anymore.

We did stuff like this for about eight weeks, not counting one extra week prior to all that where we waited for our division to get enough people to actually start Boot Camp. But finally, once all that was done, we were able to go to Battle Stations, the final test that separates the wannabes from the Sailors. This series of exercises put together all of our knowledge and our skills, and put us in situations that were based off of real-life scenarios that had actually happened to Sailors in the past. Our division was divided into two separate teams that navigated the various courses at different times. If the entire division could make it through with less than three team strikes, we would pass. We made it through with two. Also, an individual would be disqualified and set back in training if he had three individual strikes. If I remember correctly, only two of our shipmates had one strike each.

So, we made it through Battle Stations, and were able to trade off our ball caps that said "Recruit" for the ones that said "Navy." Technically, we were still recruits until we left the Recruit Training Command base, but for all intents and purposes, we were Sailors. Graduation came a few days later, which was momentous and grand and triumphant (at least, it was for those of us who had gone through Boot Camp), and five days after graduation was when we shipped off to our next duty stations.

And that's another story. Until next time.