Boneheads of 627**

I swear this actually happened
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Boneheads of 627**

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Moderator Note: The following were separate threads originally, but are so closely related it was decided to combine them here into one thread. Note the Subject title changes.
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Boneheads of 627**

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From: "gradyh627" <gharrison@...>
Date: Fri May 7, 2004 9:35 am
Subject: Boneheads of 627

Gents,
Could you please post some of the most boneheaded things you might
have witnessed (or done) on the Madison. With the sleep we were
getting, some of us did some things that under normal circumstances
we wouldn't.
I'll contribute one of these :
"there we were 150 ft under the waves, two Victor IIIs on our
tail... just kidding...
Getting a fresh cup of java on the mess decks I saw one of our Nuke
EM2s replace the female end of an electrical extension chord. He had
removed the female plug and set the cord down on a steel table when
the cord had started jumping around and sparking. He had left the
male end plugged into a 110V socket while taking the other end
apart. What was amusing is how long it took him to realize what was
going on: he stared at the sparks for a while (about 10 seconds) in
disbelief almost hypnotized, then saw the plug in the wall and
finally unplugged it. He looked at me holding the plug in his hand
and said sheepishly "That was pretty neat... Sir". Last time I
talked to him, he was at the controls of a nuke plant in the north
east (I won't tell you which one, I don't want to hurt the local
real estate values...)
I could tell how I could be credited with one of the fastest single
loop recoveries in the Navy (things do go much faster when you skip
a page in the nuclear operating manual and don't realize it) but
we'll save that one for another day...
Post your boneheads,
Grady
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Bonehead #2**

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From: "Richard(Gold crew 83-87) QM2/SS" <sorrem@...>
Date: Fri May 7, 2004 9:58 am
Subject: Bonehead #2

While sitting in the crews lounge I heard a loud horn noise go off.
Here is a first class (no names of course) holding the sign in one
hand that is for blowing sanitary and the ball valve handle in the
other. So what does he do, well he opens the ball valve again in
total disbelieve that what happen just happen. Two times in a row
now that should be the all time crapper award.

Richard
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Bonehead #3**

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From: "Dave McMahon" <dcmcmahon8306@...>
Date: Fri May 7, 2004 10:14 am
Subject: Bonehead #3

We were doing angles and dangles and someone who I won't name, from
the Bayou got on a laundry bag by the torpedo room and when we took
and up angle, he took off. Made it around the corner by the mess
decks and I believe he went down the ladder right outside MCC. I
believe all he got was a broken nose, but it's been 25 years ago.
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bonehead #3** [4]

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From: "Richard(Gold crew 83-87) QM2/SS" <sorrem@...>
Date: Fri May 7, 2004 10:17 am
Subject: bonehead #3

Here is another bonehead award. I get racked out of a good sleep to
releive watch in control after I just got off of watch. Well a
certain QM who has been in for a while (not me) got loss at sea. How
the heck do you get loss at sea when you get the position from Nav
Center. The Navigator was not to happy nor the Captain. He had to re-
qual all over again. Come on, just call Nav Center for our
position. Need less to say he is still in and a First Class. I
hope he learned from that one.
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bonehead # 5**

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From: "Richard(Gold83-87) QM" <sorrem@...>
Date: Fri May 7, 2004 11:02 am
Subject: bonehead # 5

I don't know the whole reason behind this one. The title of the
story is "How the Madison Sunk at the Pier" If my memory serves me
right they were going to work on the aft ballast tank vent valve.
They decided not to put a seal over the bottom free fload vents.
What I remember most was the majority of the crew standing on the
pier watching the Madison sink as they open the valves. Did I
mention that the shore power was still connected in the aft hatch.
I guess when they started take in water they new they had a problem.
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bonehead # 7? **

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From: DA Dossin <danatl@...>
Date: Fri May 7, 2004 12:53 pm
Subject: Re: [USS_James_Madison_SSBN627] bonehead # 7?

During the middle 60s, Blue crew, there was an unnamed capt, who shall remain unnamed only because I am too old to remember...... who walked into con hold THE sign from the crapper and a strange liquid dripping from his nose........
Needless to say, a very LOUD hush happened. The Aux jumped up, told the Capt something about "I will clean that up." Where upon the Capt laughed and mumbled something about cleaning it up himself. Great guy. <smile>
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Re: bonehead # 5**

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From Yahoo wrote:From: "Richard(Gold83-87) QM" <sorrem@...>
Date: Fri May 7, 2004 11:02 am
Subject: bonehead # 5

I don't know the whole reason behind this one. The title of the
story is "How the Madison Sunk at the Pier"
From: Ed Kelleher <Pres@...>
Date: Fri May 7, 2004 1:02 pm
Subject: Re: [USS_James_Madison_SSBN627] bonehead # 5

I remember us sinking on sea trials.

Before diving the first time after a refit two officers have to do a
"compensation". They note what weights have changed from the reference dive. They have a worksheet with everything from the number and type of torpedos up front, to the level in the hydraulic oil tanks back aft. About 90 items all together.

They try and figure what to put in the trim tanks to give neutral trim on
the first dive after the refit.

On my second patrol they figured we were 20,000 lbs lighter so of course they flooded in 20,000 lbs to compensate.

The dive went something like this:

Dive! Dive!
...
Make your depth 120 feet ...
One Two Zero feet aye ...
Passing 120 feet ...
Mind your helm ...
Passing 160 feet ...
Pump auxiliaries to sea ...
Passing 200 feet ...
???
5 second blow forward tanks ...
Passing 300 feet ...
EMERGENCY BLOW!

I forget how deep we actually went, but the water in the area where we did sea trials from the Holy Loch was only 100 fathoms or so deep (600 feet for the memory impaired <g>).

Turns out on the compensation they had the signs wrong. We were actually 20,000 lbs HEAVY and flooding in 20,000 lbs made us 40,000
lbs heavy on the trim dive.

I was dangling out the NAV center door by the BCP watching the fun and games.

That patrol, I wrote a program for the Nav center CNC computers that let
the officers key in what torpedos we had, gals of hydraulic oil, weights in
the tanks etc. etc. The computer would then print out what to put in forward and after trim tanks and AUX 2 and 3 to hopefully achieve neutral trim.

Our skipper, George Schilling, turned it in for a "Safety of Ship" benny
sug (Beneficial Suggestion). SubLant approved it for Subron14 use and gave me a $50 award - about 25 cents an hour. Not much, but it bought a round at the Argyll :-)


Ed (EJ) Kelleher
ETN2 (SS) SSBN627B 1972-1976
Columbia, SC
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Re: bonehead # 5**

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From Yahoo wrote:From: "Richard(Gold83-87) QM" <sorrem@...>
Date: Fri May 7, 2004 11:02 am
Subject: bonehead # 5

I don't know the whole reason behind this one. The title of the
story is "How the Madison Sunk at the Pier" If my memory serves me
right they were going to work on the aft ballast tank vent valve.
They decided not to put a seal over the bottom free fload vents.
What I remember most was the majority of the crew standing on the
pier watching the Madison sink as they open the valves. Did I
mention that the shore power was still connected in the aft hatch.
I guess when they started take in water they new they had a problem.
From: "gradyh627" <gharrison@...>
Date: Fri May 7, 2004 6:09 pm
Subject: Re: bonehead # 5

Sinking the boat pier side qualified as a SUBLANT incident... I
remeber that one, as a matter of fact I participated. Unfortunately
I was EDO in maneuvering when it happened. We were to pop an after
main ballast tank vent that was leaking. The tender wouldn't give us
a belly band saying the check valves of teh other ballast tanks
would seat (RIGHT!). We popped the vent pierside without the
bellyband, things stayed quiet for a while. Actually we were venting
the other MBTs as well and were slowly sinking by the stern. We knew
something was amiss when I saw a waterfall into ERUL through the
escape trunk, the cofferdam was installed without a gasket and we
had shorepower on... I shut the hatch and divorced from shore
power... I guess I must have dropped the non-vital buses as I think
to recall hearing a general alarm and a nuclear weapons security
violation... It would have been almost funny had we had high
pressure and/or the low pressure blower available and not tagged
out. It turned out to be a real Cluster F trying to keep the boat
afloat.
After recovering from this beautiful evolution of submerging
pierside... the MBT vent was put back into place without repair.
A few days later our DCA tested the emergency blow system pierside
with the isolation valves in bleed instead of shut and hosed down
the pier... So much for that DCA
After that incident, I got the DCA job and had to do the MBT
replacement tender-side with a belly band on December 31st (at
night)... the divers put the bellyband on the wrong side, cut off
flow to RPFW, alarms lit up maneuvering... emergency extraction of
divers while we were overrinding danger tags restoring cooling
flow... Dropped the MBT vent and nicked the seating surface... Had
to call the squadrom repair officer from his new year's eve party to
bless off the nick... All the while the navigator was continuously
hurling insults at the tender crane operators for breaking a nav
light while lowering the race track on the sail.
It was my most memorable new year's eve ever, ever.
I must thank our Eng, Jim Dullea who helped me keep my sanity that
night with words like, don't worry Grady, we're just snorkeling
through bullshit...
It wasn't bonehead stuff, just another great Navy day... all this
and a paycheck too.
Grady
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Re: bonehead # 5**

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From: "Clyde Porter" <cwporter@...>
Date: Fri May 7, 2004 8:33 pm
Subject: Re: [USS_James_Madison_SSBN627] Re: bonehead # 5

Reminds me of the time that Charlie P had an air hydro test on the main seawater system. Normal enough proceedure until he decided to relieve the pressure by cycling the hull valves. The new "side thrusters" were held in check once the mooring lines tightened up.

CWP
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More boneheads**

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From: "gradyh627" <gharrison@...>
Date: Mon May 10, 2004 11:07 am
Subject: More boneheads

Shipmates,
I defy anyone to beat the Goldies of the 80s... Try submerging
during a TRE with locked Main Ballast Tank Vents... I recall
counting every round of .45 cal. ammunition on board after the
laundry queen found an unspent round banging around the dryer (we
couldn't come up with the missing round and had to conclude that
some bonehead decided to not only to bring his own to kill commies
for Christ, but to occasionnally wash it by accident).
A recently qualified Aux Forward misinterpreted the words "in port"
and "at sea" in the procedure to blow Aux 1 sanitary tank. While
cruising on the surface towards Kings Bay, it was always a good
practice to pump or blow all sanitaries before coming too close to
land. You guessed it, the Aux forward thought as we were on the
surface it must be like being in port and lined up to blow topside
instead of below. The OOD heard some strange gurgling noise and saw
the flange we bolt on the connection go airborne, propelled by a
geyser of foul smelling liquid. A fine salute to the pigboats of
yore. The OOD and lookout were sprayed (sent to shower), the sail
covered with effluents had to be washed (went back out to sea to
submerge to clean up and arrived late in port) and the recently
qualified Aux Forward became newly disqualified.
Grady
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Another Bonehead**

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From: "john_hodgie" <jhhodges@...>
Date: Mon May 10, 2004 11:22 am
Subject: Another Bonehead

The drill was Loss of Main Seawater. The XO was a drill monitor, and
comes down waving his arms and says to me (AMR2UL) "There are streams of water coming from this area here! Streams of water!"

Being the bright (and green) AMR2-UL watch, (and thinking the XO
said "Steam and water" instead of "Streams of water", I ran to the
2JV and cried, "Maneuvering, this is a drill, there's a steam leak in
Machinery Two!" and immediately the RO placed the switches in close,
and the steam stop valves hydraulic closure mechanisms spun the
valves closed in an instant. I was so happy. I was the hero. Until I
heard over the PA, "Secure from the drill. Petty Officer Hodges,
contact maneuvering."

If you remember how hard it was to re-open those MSIV's by hand,
those confounded zillion-turn valves... guess who had the priviledge
of performing the task?
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From: <janses01@...>
Date: Mon May 10, 2004 4:16 pm
Subject: Re: [USS_James_Madison_SSBN627] Another Bonehead

was the XO J.D. Apple?
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From: "Hodges, John" <jhhodges@...>
Date: Mon May 10, 2004 6:10 pm
Subject: RE: [USS_James_Madison_SSBN627] Another Bonehead

Gee, I can't remember his name, but Apple was not it. We called him "Darryl Beano". Because he came by all the time with rules. "There will be no..."
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From: "Mikes account" <jmichaelwebb@...>
Date: Tue May 11, 2004 6:05 pm
Subject: Re: [USS_James_Madison_SSBN627] Another Bonehead

J.D. Apple was the XO in '69...he signed my transfer to the Hunley, for
discharge....He was genuinely surprised, that I decided to get out....:)
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