Retrospective (2 of… ?)

Part 2 – A Deployment, and a Return of Sorts

The saga continues as I am exiled once more to the western Pacific.

The Intermission

Navy life is full of intermissions, (typically) brief intervals spent transiting from one duty station to the next in which one somehow manages to be paid as a fulltime member of the Navy without actually doing much in the way of “navying.” In addition to the one to several days allotted for travel (the number of days contingent on the distance between duty stations), service members will typically be permitted to extend this transitory period by expending days of leave. It is also not uncommon to be assigned to a so-called “intermediate stop” along the way, with the time at such stops amounting usually to days or weeks spent receiving additional training. However, as a surface warfare officer selected for nuclear propulsion training, my first intermission between proper assignments lasted just over a year, as I detached from my first ship in April of 2007 and did not finally report to my next ship until June 2008. To be fair, quite a bit happened during this first “intermission” of mine, and as far as the Navy was concerned the places where I trained were not intermediate stops, but actual permanent changes of station (to new duty stations, new bases/cities). While I might come back to this period of time in another post about duty ashore (or just homeports), the key takeaways from this period are that:

1. A year passed between the end of my second deployment and the start of my third.
2. In the meantime, I reached the two-year mark from the day I commissioned, and a couple weeks after that I promoted to Lieutenant Junior Grade according to the Navy’s convoluted scheme of promoting Ensigns to JG.
3. By the end of it, I had an additional qualification designator allowing me to “stand watch” supervising the operation of a nuclear reactor (obtained through one of the Navy’s shore-based nuclear power training units, with live reactors and training staff).

Towards the very end of this “intermission,” I was given the opportunity to submit preferences for my next assignment. Of course my options were limited to nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, which in 2008 meant USS Enterprise (CVN 65, the first nuclear powered carrier, alone among its class and coming up on fifty years of service), and the nine (plus one) ships of the Nimitz-class (CVN 68 to 76 already in commission, with CVN 77 due to commission within the year and its pre-commissioning crew already assembled).

When I submitted my preferences, I told them (the immortal “them”) that above all else I did not want orders to Enterprise. That was because it was old, its reactor plant design was “unique,” and I knew that if I ever wound up doing another tour on a CVN (spoiler alert: I did), the one guarantee would be that it would not be on Enterprise as, given its age, it would surely be decommissioned by then (and it was). In contrast, while there were and are notable differences between the nuclear propulsion plants of various Nimitz-class carriers, they are at least variations on a common theme, and as of writing this in 2022, not one of them has been decommissioned (they have all outlasted me!). I expect to be in my seventies, and quite possibly dead, by the time the last member of the class (George H.W. Bush) is decommissioned. So, for obvious reasons, I did not want to go to Enterprise.

As a secondary consideration, seeing that I had ten ships that weren’t the Enterprise to choose from and it seemed not unreasonable to narrow my preferences down just a bit more, I further told them that I did not want to be assigned to USS George Washington because it was, at that very moment, en route from Norfolk, Virginia to Yokosuka, Japan, to relieve USS Kitty Hawk (the last of the diesel-fueled aircraft carriers in the U.S. Navy) to become the first ever forward deployed nuclear powered aircraft carrier. I had done my time in Japan, and I did not need to do anymore.

I suppose I should be grateful they did not send me to Enterprise. It was a small mercy…

“Deployment” #3

I reported to USS George Washington on June 8, 2008 as the ship was pierside in San Diego, California. Although George Washington was always scheduled to have a few days in San Diego for mid-voyage repairs (transiting from Norfolk to Yokosuka, down around South America and via the Strait of Magellan), the ship had just experienced a pretty big fire, caused by a combination of factors including improper stowage of hazardous materials, a failure to inspect compartments, and topped off by unauthorized smoking in interior spaces. The joke was that it was “Neptune’s Revenge,” because the ship had held off on having the usual “crossing the line” ceremony during the southbound transit in the Atlantic. The plan instead was to hold the ceremony on the northbound transit, but just a day or two before that was to happen the ship caught fire. That’s what you get for failing to abide by the customs and traditions imposed by Neptunus Rex. A warning to all mariners.

Anyway, I showed up in San Diego while the ship was about three weeks into what would amount to a three month mid-voyage repair, with the final tab for the U.S. Navy amounting at $70 million. Although it was the United States of America and the ship was not at sea, the ship and its crew had already been administratively transitioned over to Yokosuka. It actually kind of sucked for the single sailors, because being assigned on paper to Japan meant they were no longer getting a housing allowance for Norfolk, but also could not get the Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) for Yokosuka until the ship both physically arrived in Japan and they managed to sign a lease somewhere out in town (which would have some hurdles of its own–more on that later). So, technically, San Diego was just a very long port visit at the start of my third so-called “deployment” (WestPac 2A we might call it). With that intro out of the way…

1. San Diego, CA (June to August 2008). The ship sat pierside from May to August. Significant portions of the ship, to include some of the Reactor Department’s administrative offices (but not the propulsion plant spaces themselves), were gutted by fire and the damage was still plainly visible as I reported aboard. By the end of the “port visit,” the Commanding Officer, Executive Officer, and several other officers would be fired. But as for me? Well, the Reactor Department was busy trying to reconstruct all the training documentation and other logs burnt up in the fire (the Reactor Training Classroom itself was in the area directly above the source of the fire and hardest hit), and of course the reactors were not exactly operational as we sat pierside for a prolonged period of time, so I and the other non-qual officers in the department didn’t have a whole lot that we could do except study.

Oh, and there was this thing we had called “non-qual Tuesday.” Basically, we would knock off “work” early Tuesday morning (actually, we wouldn’t even start work) and spend the day going to bars, movies, restaurants, and etc. I imagine we would have been in a lot of trouble if the Reactor Training Assistant (RTA) ever found out, but, well… he had other things to worry about (like a major inspection that was supposed to happen just before pulling into San Diego, but was rescheduled to come after leaving San Diego on account of the fire and, oh, right, all the training materials that got burnt up in it). Unfortunately, none of our untamed JO shenanigans lent themselves to being photographed (all those dark spaces), so here’s some well-lit pictures from around San Diego instead:

The “port visit” to San Diego came to an end around the time the 2008 Summer Olympics were kicking off in Beijing. While the rest of the ship got to go ashore until just a couple days before we took in all lines and put out to sea, bound across the Pacific for Japan, Reactor Department had to do a two week “fast cruise” (basically, pretending like we were out to sea even though we really weren’t, like practicing for the real thing). That meant liberty was secured, and there would be no more “non-qual Tuesdays.”

So instead we spent our time not studying (that is, most of our time) in one of the wardrooms (where the officers eat), going through stockpiles of cookies that the cooks (“culinary specialists”) for some reason neglected to stow. At the end of it all, when the ship finally got underway, we headed straight for Japan without any port visits along the way (the original plan called for, I think, a week in Hawaii, but so much time had already been “burnt” in San Diego that there was barely enough time to slow down and take on additional stores/aviation fuel via underway replenishment as we “CPA’d” Hawaii: to this day, I still have not even seen Hawaii, let alone set foot on it).

2. Yokosuka, Japan (September 2008). Even though this was technically like a return to homeport (especially for me, as I’d been stationed in Yokosuka before), I’m classifying our arrival in Yokosuka not as a return to homeport, but as a port visit because it was so brief. We pulled in on September 25, 2008, and were back out to sea mere days later for the previously scheduled fall cruise. This “port visit” is notable in that it is the only time I have ever tied up with a band on the pier. The “storybook” Navy homecoming.

Originally, the plan was for the ship to have a full month in port for maintenance/upkeep and to allow the crew of several thousand new arrivals in Japan to find housing and arrange to have household goods delivered after months in transit or in storage. But, having spent some months longer than expected in San Diego and having the inaugural round of bi- and multi-national exercises already scheduled, there was no time for that. And since sailors wishing to obtain residence out in town were required to attend a training brief at the housing office prior to doing so; and since the housing office could only accommodate a couple dozen sailors at a time (with normal working hours and weekends off, of course); and since it was the practice at the time (perhaps still is) to pay the first and last month’s rent, plus a gratuity fee to the owner, plus an agent’s fee, and all in cash (equivalent to about $8,000–in yen, of course) at lease signing… it was very hard for so many sailors to jump through all the hoops to sign a lease. You had to either get an advance payment from the Navy on the housing allowance to cover all that (which also took time: the Navy is never quick, but most especially where money to sailors is involved), or you had to have all that money just sitting around, waiting to be withdrawn in Japan. The only way to do it was to have an account already setup with one of the two US banks with branches on the naval base, and to withdraw the amount (assuming the money was on hand) as a cashier’s check in dollars, and then hand-carry it to one of the banks out in town (a branch of the Bank of Yokohama was conveniently located a short walk from the main gate), and convert it into yen (less a cut for the bank, naturally).

All that to say, almost no one succeeded in signing a lease on an apartment during that brief interlude in Yokosuka. Almost no one. I, of course, had been in Japan just the year before, still had a record of all the various orientation and cultural indoctrination courses I’d completed for that previous tour, and still had the necessary bank account–with ten thousand dollars already in it–from the last time I’d done the housing dance. I was thus able to walk into the housing office within twenty-four hours of arriving in Yokosuka, open up one of their many binders full of property listings, and select a suitably-priced rental within walking distance of the base. I even went so far as to use the same rental agent I’d had in 2005. Another 24 hours and I was ready to move into my apartment and spend the weekend there, although it would remain vacant for the next two and a half months as the ship got underway again.

And what did all that extra effort get me, this rush to sign a lease on an apartment? Well, there was the view of course…

…but as you can see it was kind of a “middling” view.

What the effort really got me was five hundred dollars a month in COLA, starting in October instead of December or January. So… $1000 to $1500 that my otherwise similarly situated shipmates didn’t get. Plus, I got to fix it so that my household goods were ready to be delivered just as soon as we returned to port in December, which meant I got to spend the holiday stand-down sleeping in a bed ashore, rather than on the floor or, worse, on the ship (I’d sooner sleep in a shipping container in Iraq than spend a night on the ship if I had the choice–I’ve done both).

I’ll leave off with this port visit simply by noting that although it might seem like a small matter (getting COLA in October instead of December), if you really think it’s such a non-issue and not worth complaining about for the sailors who didn’t get it, consider how you might feel if your boss decided to randomly pay out $1,000 bonuses to some employees, but not to you. Not for any difference in work output, mind you, or even a genuine difference in need, but just at random. Like, if everyone who was born on the seventh of the month got a bonus check, and everyone else was just out of luck. Even if you were born on the seventh, you’d agree that kind of messed up, right?

Anyway, as we left Yokosuka, ahead of some exercises and another port visit, I finally got religion and decided I should start actually studying to qualify as a Propulsion Plant Watch Officer (PPWO). I was supposed to qualify within six months of reporting on board, and here I was at well past three without much progress to show (and the RTA was starting to ask questions, now that the inspection was over). Fortunately, my next port visit was to somewhere that, if you’ve read my earlier retrospective post, you will understand I wasn’t too enthused about.

3. Busan, South Korea (October 2008). This was my… fourth time in Korea? Or at least, technically it was, but I barely set foot ashore for a couple reasons.

First, as noted, I had been to Korea several times already and never (thanks entirely to the Navy, not due to any fault in the host nation) to any location known particularly well for tourism. If, like me, you’re an American and you’ve heard of Busan previously it’s probably in relation to the Pusan Perimeter in the early days of the Korean War, being the the last foothold for US and ROK forces in Korea prior to the Inchon landing. But then even if you have heard of that, whether as a military history buff or a fan of the television series M*A*S*H, you may not have made the association with Busan, with a *B*, as the method of “romanization” (converting Hongul letters of the Korean alphabet to Latin script as used in English) was revised circa the year 2000, which led to some confusion (for me at least) in my earlier 2005/2006 port visits to South Korea as certain place names were not yet uniform among the various sources consulted. So, what was famously known as the Pusan Perimeter for encompassing the area around the city then described in western sources as Pusan during the darkest days (from a US/UN/ROK perspective) of the Korean War might now be named to the Busan Perimeter (though so far as I know sources about the historical perimeter and ensuing battle still refer to it as the Pusan Perimeter, in keeping with how it was described at the time). To be clear, the city’s actual name has not changed: only how it is represented in latin script.

History and orthography lesson aside, I would still have liked to go ashore in Busan because it is a fairly good-sized city (the second most populous in South Korea, after Seoul) and I’m sure there was more than enough to fill a weekend at least. But as it was, I did not have weekend, or the equivalent, to spare. At this point, I was four months into my second division officer tour–my nuclear division officer tour–but did not have a division yet. Unlike on conventional ships, SWOs are actually expected to be qualified prior to taking over a division. It’s a novel concept, really: this idea that newly reporting officers should first be trained in their job, and only once they have passed a threshold level of qualification be actually put in charge of people or programs, but it’s how the nuclear Navy does business, at least aboard carriers (I can’t speak to how the submarine community does business). At the time, new officers were allowed six months to qualify, so I wasn’t “dink” yet, but having… misspent much of my time in San Diego going out to bars and movies and such with my fellow non-quals, I was sort of playing catchup. We all were. So, alas, I have no pictures of Busan. Google it and I’m sure something will come up–from the looks of it, it’s actually a beautiful city. I went ashore for at most two hours, and possibly much less, to get a walking tour of the ROK naval base they had us tied up at, but that was it. We had one more port visit scheduled for the cruise, to some place warm, and I wanted to be able to spend time ashore there.

One of the things I kind of missed about being on the destroyer, being in a topside billet and standing watch on the bridge instead of in the propulsion plant, was having some sense of where I was, where we were going, and what we were doing. I’d review the chart every time I was on the bridge and get an idea of what was out there, I’d see the islands–islands you would wouldn’t even know existed–as we passed by, with names I can scarcely remember, some of them lit by night, others standing out pitch black as silhouettes against a moonlit sky and have this sense that I was still somewhere on Earth. Even with the ship pitching and rolling beneath me, I could imagine that I was on one of those islands.

But there was none of that on the carrier. It’s often said of submariners that they can go for months without seeing daylight, and surface nukes are supposed to be distinguished in that regard. But in my experience, the only difference being a nuke on a submarine versus a nuke on a CVN is that on a CVN you don’t have the comfort of deluding yourself into believing that it’s the ocean depths keeping you from the sun: you know all too well that it is your job that keeps you down in the bowels of the ship, away from the light of day. True, being a nuclear engineer on a CVN (and especially an officer) isn’t exactly shoveling coal (although for some of the enlisted mechanics, it may take on that level of labor at times), but I lived on the second deck (directly below the hangar deck), I ate on the second deck, and I in the bowels of the ship. Between shifts, well, what was I going to do? Drag myself topside just to see the sky? I’d much rather be sleeping. The sun might be just on the other side of the bulkhead, but otherwise it might as well be underwater.

Under such conditions, I had almost no sense of what the ship did after we left Busan, or indeed most of my time on board when we weren’t in port doing maintenance. I suspect, based solely on my prior experience in the FDNF and the time of year, that we did an ANNUALEX with the JMSDF, but that’s just a guess–it might have come later. All I know for certain is that I next saw daylight in November, when we pulled into…

4. Guam (November 2008). During my first tour in Japan I got tantalizingly close to Guam, but never pulled in–didn’t even anchor out. We got close enough to launch a boat to pick up a suitcase with some crypto in it or something, and then departed.

In Guam, as with the port visit to Busan, I didn’t get to spend as much time off the ship as I otherwise might have, but I had a nuke school buddy on a submarine homeported there and we got to hang out a bit, so that was cool. Plus it’s kind of tropical, and they let us off the ship without a liberty buddy during daylight hours, so I managed to find my way up a hill. Unfortunately, I still wasn’t on my A-game as far as picture-taking, so the best I can provide is this photo from the naval base:

And that was the “deployment.” On the way back, I completed my PPWO qualification and had my oral board with the Commanding Officer six months to the day from reporting on board, having never gone dink, and just in time to get on the watchbill for holiday stand-down and the five months of maintenance and upkeep that followed. To make up for the dearth of pictures, here’s one I took of Fuji from Sagami-wan on the way back to Yokosuka. Sorry it’s not clearer. Navy nukes may have the power to split atoms and turn mercury into gold by bombarding it with radiation, but we still don’t have any greater command of the weather than the weather-guessers do:

While being in port for five months might seem like it would be an easy time, it’s actually anything but for nukes in a maintenance period. The longer the maintenance period, the harder it is because additional training is required in order to be ready to return to operating the plant at the end of the maintenance period, and many of the evolutions being conducted in the plant (such as cooling down the reactor plant so work can be done on it without generating steam or causing burns on contact with piping) are abnormal, time consuming, and tightly controlled. Standing duty one day out of every three did not leave much time to see Japan, and on a couple of duty days I spent 24 hours unable to leave the propulsion plant except to piss. By the end of one of those days, I was hallucinating. 18 hours into another (on realizing it was transitioning into yet another 24 hours in the chair), and I may or may not have had… a but of a meltdown. That’s life on a CVN undergoing for you.

I had originally planned to include the next year’s deployment in this as well, with port visits to Australia, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Singapore but it’s proving to be a bit much, particularly as it seems this is becoming less of a photo album and more of a recounting of events. It was in the interval between this deployment and the next that I would find myself serving under the worst Commanding Officer I ever had, and I want to be able to give that its due attention.

Now, seeing as it’s Memorial Day weekend in the US, I’ll close by circling back to something that happened during the “intermission” period. On April 15, 2008, my NROTC Unit’s Gunnery Sergeant was killed by an IED in Afghanistan. In the three years since I had graduated, he had predictably moved on with his career and been promoted to First Sergeant. I was still looking through the casualty lists coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan daily at this point–had been for three years–and when I saw his name I was sure I must be mistaken, that it could not be him. After about a minute, the truth hit me, and it was intense. He was and is my model of a Marine.