Columbia (CL 56) - Naval Cruise Book

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boriously practiced fscraping, scrubbing, not to mention loading the gunsj . This is the Combat Information Centerf' explained the ensign fshipis company, of coursej as he led us into a dimly lit room, spotted here and there by a bewildering dis- play of illuminated dials. We stood around awkwardly, shifting our weight uneasily from one foot to the other. KNOW, when a skunk or a bogey, he con- tinued, is picked up on the SG, SK, or SP, we can find its course and speed by applying the three minute rule on the DRT. Oh!',, someone gasped in amazement. Encouraged by such rapt attention our in- structor strode to the other side of the room. And this, he patiently continued, is the air plotf' An embarassing silence followed as each of us tried to think of some half-way intelligent question to ask. Finally, in desperation, some- one inquired with affected interest, What is K I -l,g, 137' www?

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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-

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this? , pointing to a slowly moving circle of light on a transluscent table. That, our guide replied, swelling up with importance, is the bug. We all nodded wisely. So thafs what it was! Uh, the meek looking trainee hesitated. Yes, our instructor eagerly promoted him. What is CIC for? , he asked with childlike simplicity. The function of CIC, our informant recited impressively, is to collect, display, evaluate, disseminate, advise, and control? An awkward pause followed. We were duly impressed. Any questions? our instructor asked confidently. The silence was unbroken. Very well, he stated magnanimously. The class is secured. Navigation, from whence the Navy got its name, is the science of knowing exactly where we are going and finding out where we are when we wind up somewhere else. Up forward in the Warrant Officer's Mess we spent a full week learning the intricacies of the navigation business. We worked with dividers, protractors, and not--so-parallel rulers finding the theoretical position of a hypothetical ship on an imaginary course at some arbitrary tirne. After a series of enlightening films we were convinced that the sun revolves in a circle around the earth. The practical applications of navigation were discovered at four-thirty in the morning when, twenty-four sextant in hand, we climbed to the signal bridge and shot stars. The whole idea was to find the star we wanted in the place we wanted it, or some reasonable facsimile. They all looked the same at 0430 anyway. The sextant gave the possible elevation of the probable star in con- sideration, which when checked through a series of doubtful calculations showed us whether we were before or behind ourselves. After we had undergone all this hearty in- struction we had to pass a final examination based on material we surely knew by this time. We were assured of passing easily if we paid attention in class. Everyone is suddenly wor- ried. Given the course of a ship whose captain is three feet tall located in the eighth latitude above 720 Fahrenheit, we must find the speed of sunrise and the temperature of the Executive OHicer's shower. With the test completed and navigation safely a thing of the past, we decide that we didn't really want to go USN in the first place. In our week of instruction in the C 8: R de- partment we acquired still more of those in- tangible little qualities which are so essential to the good officer. Indispensable information which was overlooked in our formal training, 'gknowledge never learned of schools, was then revealed before our wondering eyes. The exact science of opening and closing a vise, the most practical stroke in scraping paint, the complex inter-locking grip used on a hammer-all these fine arts were explained with meticulous care. Here, too, we Hrst became acquainted with the traffic rules of the high seas, The Rules of the Road. Many of the more naive student