Columbia (CL 56) - Naval Cruise Book

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The Hrst, an instruction period, was devoted to lectures, movies, and field trips to the gear being studied. During the second period we manned our gun drill stations and painfully learned what not to do, so that by the time we Bred the guns, we did not blow up the ship. This concluded our morning activities and we raced like mad to the noon chow line. In the afternoon we had two more periods. The first was called Departmental Drills. We soon found this to be a glaring error and that a dozen more apt names could be used. Under this heading came chipping paint, wiping grease, scrubbing decks, and on Friday we were carefully instructed in the values and proce- dures of Field Day. The last period was devoted to much the same thing as the opening period: films, lec- tures, field trips, and sleep. This was our procedure for the cruise, and whatever our ideas might have been, we were suddenly aware that we were back in school and old classroom habits cropped up: sleeping, writing, doodling, and occasionally listening to the lecture. The main purpose of any Navy lighting ship is to get its guns to the scene of action and when there to maintain the greatest rate of fire possible. Pursuant to that purpose we learned how to fire the guns, fired them-and there the purpose ends-no ship. We spent fouriweeks in gunnery training. Each week found us tackling a new phase of the whole shipboard gunnery system and a new place to scrape paint. ' One week was spent in the six-inch turrets wavering between attacks of claustrophobia and suffocation and trying to gain at least third hand the principles being discussed by the knot of men sprawled and jammed over the breeches and rammers of the guns. In the class room we learned that Explosive D was not a new, de- vastating perfume but was truly that-Explo- sive D. The paint scraping area for this week was on the fantail. One week was spent on the five inch turrets. We saw many films on the five-inch gun of a revolutionary new character. These films had little fairy bells that rang periodically: first, to Q? ,ETA-Jrgxyfb Qt f . f,aQ5 F gi' :MTL '11 fmfm ? Ogg ini: fc! l K f 0 SQ 10 vu. 7, ,, K, , N S4-. 1:.' ix if ZW -lg bn.:-'fr-X 1 S Q W

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had one, but this was discarded when the bugle calls could not be explained. Some swore it was a modern orchestra practicing, but these strange calls hailed from the quarterdeck, and we knew that nothing so terrible would be allowed there. Some said that it could be a series of love calls of the inhabitants, but this was immediately ruled out because of the limited effective range of the Hsquawk boxes. The Hnal conclusion, and the one still most generally believed, was put forward by a psy- chology major. This learned gentleman de- clared that undoubtedly this was the result of a distorted conception of the old phrase that Music hath charm to sooth the savage. He supposed that someone had taken this to heart and had immediately arranged for this strange music to soothe and relax us during our day's labors. He further pointed out that the whole reasoning was wrong, for truly instead of civil- ized music to soothe the savage, savage music had been imported to soothe the civilized. The attempt had, therefore, been in vain as evi- denced by those poor souls wandering dazedly around the deck strumming their lips. We have 1 X0 A -if in 2 OWL 1 I i t ar by X galil' it I 1 2 twenty - ll np it - Q? 1 'f ,, Ml 17 Q., be , l 8 I Xl lf J- Tx' if 5 ca -any 1 l wq . mV. , A K I: . iff XE, 3 ar ' V: - N K I reported as much to the Navy Department in a coded dispatch on the subject, but, unfor- tunately, it seems to have been lost in red tape for these eerie interludes still continue. We came aboard on Friday. After two days on a bar-room floor for some and watches for the rest, we launched into a regular schedule on Monday. We were divided into groups and sent to various departments for instruction. Some were sent to Gunnery, some to C8zR, some to Communications, some to Engineering, some to Navigation, and some to C.I.C. After we served out our time in one department, we would shift to another, so that by the time the cruise was over we would have spent some time in each department learning the intricacies of each departmenfs duties and where they scraped paint. For most of us the classes were boring .... damned boring .... for we saw old Films and studied already familiar books once again. Some of the periods were interest- ing as we recaptured an old skill of a former rate or as we looked in detail Qscrubhing detail, scraping detail, steel wool detailj into the deep secrets of the modern technical fields. Our class day was divided into four periods.

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' Lf My 4 ,W , .f ,dia . , j3f W.' H. 'JF' .f . N ,-. M MW' 1 1 I I I u I r 3. soothe our frayed nerves and secondly fa most insidious purposej to awaken us. Instead of the usual scraping this week the monotony was broken by scrubbing down the turrets. The cam plates and numerous springs of the 40mm and 20mm mounts took up time if not our interest during a third week of training. We were told what not to do but we happened to awaken at the wrong time and misunderstood the import of what was being said. As a result we finished the cruise a few men and a couple of pages short. We scraped paint on the mounts this week. The fourth week of training was befuddled in Fire Control. We met in Main Plot and made many abortive attempts at mastering the equipment there. The computer was probably the most absorbing. After turning four knobs fwith only two handsj, watching five dials twenty-two r W +t 1 ,- f with only two simple eyesj and working fever- ishly to match many dials only to have them race madly around and leave our feeble solu- tion about tive thousand miles behind, we de- cided that all fire controlmen must be hydra- headed octupi and we wouldrft care to be working in that department permanently. Our daily routine differed slightly from the normal routine in that we scrubbed decks in the morning. The rest of the day we spent gamboling over the mounts and turrets with magnifying glasses Qmuch the same as archeol- ogistsl hunting for signs of civilization-past or present-or loading dummy shells into the guns and finally the shells loading us. When we finished Gunnery, we felt that we had learned many skills that would be of ines- stimable value to us in our future Naval career for our proficiency in many Navy arts was la-