Frank Evans (DD 754) - Naval Cruise Book

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and transferred personnel . . .

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So we left Yokosuka for Long Beach on the morning of 2 April. During the long two weeks transit we did all the things we had been doing at sea throughout the cruise. We refueled . . . Forty-eight times we went along- side an oiler or the HORNET to take on the fuel which kept us going. Re- fueling at sea is a tough and dangerous evolution. It requires precision ship- handling by the conning officer. It demands experienced seamanship on the part of the deck technicians. It requires the entire crew to be especi- ally alert and safety conscious. It is an all-hands job. Throughout the cruise, the men of the EVANS performed this job bet- ter than any other crew in our task group. We had countless compliments on both our station keeping (this amounts to keeping the ship between 90 and 120 feet from the fuel ship for an average period of 30 minutes) and our seaman- ship (this amounts to pulling over an eight inch hose, uncapping it, securing it so that 100 pounds of pressure will not loosen it, and send- ing it back all in a period of 6 minutes. ) With Chief ATT AW AY at the for- ward station, TIMMONS , BM1 at the after station and GRAMLICH, TM1 , WARSON GMG1 and Chief BARNES at the amidship ' s station, we had an outstanding team which practiced almost impeccable seamanship. There was no serious accident during refuel- ing on the entire cruise. Our rig and unrig times were good enough to garner us a mention on the front page of the monthly WESTPAC Replenishment Re- port as being one of the three WEST- PAC ships to maintain outstanding times.

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♦ ♦ ♦ and replenished our stores . . . r Replenishment of stores, like refueling, is an all hands evolution. When the replenishment detail was set men hur- ried to their stations fore and aft. They had to be in life jackets, and they had to be careful. The ship depended on underway re- plenishments for a large percentage of her food. Thus it was important that the crew do a good job. They did. Transferring stores consisted essen- tially in stringing a maze of lines between the stores ship and us and then sending across nets packed with cartons, crates, boxes and bundles of all shapes and sizes. You could always tell when the eggs were coming because of steady stream of yolk would be pouring from the bottom of the net. It was a wonder that we ever had eggs at all. But we did.