Sierra (AD 18) - Naval Cruise Book

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? BLACKSMITH SHOP UPPER MACHINE SHOP 4 QPTICAL SHGP PQ

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Small boats have engines which from time to time need repairs, and there is the boat engine shop to do this type of work. ln addition to those already mentioned, there are several other shops: the print shop, the photo shop, the welding shop, the refrigeration repair shop, and the sail locker. The repair department of the Sierra accomplishes for ships of the fleet work which cannot be done by the ship itself for lack of equipment, mate- rial, or trained personnel. Whe'ther or not a ship comes alongside is deter- mined by the size of the job and the number of jobs to be done. Duringha period of nineteen months more than 250 ships have been tied up alongside our ship for repair work, and more than 500 have been tended in other berths. Those tied up alongside have ranged from little LCl's and YMS,' which were dwarfed by the huge Sierra, to the USS California. As the sizes of the vessels tended have varied, so have the jobs. lt might be turning out a small gear in the machine shop, or it might be lifting the stack off one de- stroyer and setting it down on another, and that stack switchingjob was ac- tually done by this department. lt isn't just the fine tools and equipment that makes the repair department a going concern, it's the men using them that count. Quite often during the war these men worked round the clock in shifts in order to put a combat ship back on the firing line. Seven days a week they worked, and there was no time and a half for overtime or double time for Sundays. The USS ,Sierra operated in the Pacific Ocean areas with the assigned task of repairing ships that needed it. She can report to the world at large- Mission accomplished. 1 Communications Department The communications department of the USS Sierra has given valuable service not only to our brood of ships, but also to the staffs which have had their headquarters on board this ship. Our signal bridge and radio room, as well as the coding room, worked night and day sending, receiving, coding, and decoding messages not only for our own ship, but also for all ships alongside. ln addition the men of the communications department daily edited and mimeographed the press news for distribution around the Sierra and all ships alongside. At one time our signal bridge handled an average of l50 messages a day, and twice that number of messages were handled in one record 24-hour period. Our general message center played a very large part during the war in supplying small craft with back copies of general messages. During a period of twelve months over one million copies were mimeographed and distributed. The post office was another function of the communications department handling a large volume of mail, as well as selling money orders and stamps. Every Sunday church services are held either on the boat deck or in the mess hall, and our schedule of religious services was sent to all the ships nearby, so that they could attend. When there was a Catholic chaplain in

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the harbor, our chaplain would exchange services with him, thus giving the crew the advantages of properly-conducted Protestant and Catholic serv- ices. The chaplain was always ready to talk to the sailors from the ships alongside, as well as our own ship's company. l-le maintained a library for the crew and used this library as a book exchange for the destroyers. They would bring their books over to the Sierra and swap them for some of ours Engineering Department The engineering department of our ship made its most important con tribution to the successful completion of our first overseas assignment by get ting the ship where our orders told us to go. However, when we dropped anchor and prepared to take the tin cans alongside for repairs, the engi neers' work did not stop. Many of the ships that came alongside had to se cure parts of their engineering plants in order to effect repairs to boilers generators, pumps, or steam lines. The tender's fireroom gang were not only making steam to run our own auxiliaries, but they were also supplying steam to as many as four or five ships alongside. Likewise the large turbo generators in our enginerooms supplied electricity not only to run the ma chines and equipment all over our own ship, but also to run the electrical mission. The distilling plant of the Sierra had capacity to distill up to 60,000 gal lons of water per day from sea water, and much of this water was pumped to ships alongside as drinking water or boiler feed water. The tender's ice making plant manufactured l000 pounds of ice daily, and this too was occa sionally supplied to destroyers. And if the regular fueling activities were in adequate, the Sierra's oil king could supply the smaller ships with fuel oil, diesel oil, or lubricating oil from our reserve of over a million gallons C 61 R Department The construction and repair department, headed by the First Lieutenant consisted mainly of from l00 to 240 men in the deck force. These men han dled the lines of each ship that came alongside the Sierra, and their work as riggers with the ship's six cranes was a necessary item contributing to the success of the repair department's activities, When we changed the twin five-inch gun mount on the USS California and swapped stacks between two destroyers,- the deck force was the group that handled the rigging. ln addition, men from the deck force were assigned as boat crews for the Sierra's eighteen boats which were often loaned to other ships to haul am munition, stores, or liberty parties. On occasions working parties were even sent along from the Sierra to help discharge stores from a cargo ship to the vessels we were tending. - equipment on the destroyers alongside, whose generators were out of com-