Toledo (CA 133) - Naval Cruise Book

Page 27 text:

f ' W'

Page 26 text:

L DIVISION for lookout? is commonly referred to as the eyes of the ship . The men of this division keep an alert visual lookout for aircraft, ships, floating mines and any obstacles menacing navigation. They must know and be able to determine the essential differ- ences between enemy craft and friendly craft at a glance. ENS J. H. FALTYS The training of L DIVISION men never stops. The men are shown movies of the various ships and aircraft in action, and recognition slides of the same craft. This serves to point out the finer features in recognizing contacts at the very moment they appear on the horizon or drop from behind a cloud. L DIVISION is composed of twenty-three men, hand picked from the deck divisions. The personnel of the division may be found in any one of four stations while underway: sky forward, sky aft, surface forward and surface aft. They maintain a twenty-four hour watch, and while in pilot waters or in heavy fog additional lookouts are stationed on the forecastle. The men of the division take great pride in their work and the sta- tions tor which they are responsible. They groom their spaces and study the never ending line of new ships and planes. The men of the lookout division play an important part in ship safety despite all our advancement in gadgets for navigation.

Page 28 text:

X N X, ...fs 7 T DIVISION is made up of technicians responsible for the upkeep and repair of all the electronic equipment assigned to the Operations Depart- ment. This is a big iob, the technicians taking care of over 250 maior units of electronic equipment, 55 antennas, thousands of feet of cabling, and innumerable switches, connection boxes, and miscellaneous gear. As a sideline, they take care ofthe ship's TV system and the recreation radios and speaker amplifiers. Maintaining the equipment calls for such diverse talents as clinging to a yardarm in a high wind while the ship is underway to repair an antenna, or patiently poring over a schematic instruction book to find out which of the thousand and one possible things is causing trouble. In general maintaining electronic equipment calls for intelligence, patience, interest and common sense. ' The next time the TOLEDO steams into a fog-bound Long Beach Harbor with zero visibility, or when TV brightens the duty night aboard ship, or a telegram arrives saying the wife and new baby are doing just fine, count yourself lucky in having the benefits of modern electronics, and perhaps remember the technicians who care for all these necessities and conveniences. LTJG W. N. McCAW LTJG A. NEVAREZ CHRELE L. D. GRAEFF