SMALL SHIPYARD FIRE WAS
ALMOST LARGE PR DISASTER


by former Yorktown Public Information Officer
Lt. jg Dale Potts (retired as Capt. USNR)

Junior officers were not appreciated by Senior Commanders, especially the Officer Candidate School , OCS, 90-day wonders. Since they know very little about the Navy, some of the senior officers assumed they know very little about anything of importance. I imagine there was some similar friction between Chiefs and enlisted. But at least the officers were aware that it was the Chiefs that kept the Navy running.

I learned early why some Senior Commanders never made Captain. One weekend while the YORKTOWN was in 1967 overhaul in Long Beach, I was aboard in the duty section. A fire in the asbestos lining in an unoccupied berthing area caused a tremendous amount of smoke. The fire was halted before any major damage was done but the resulting smoke blackened the sky. We received a call from the shipyard gate that several news crews had gathered there and wanted permission to film the fire. They had interviewed people departing the shipyard and learned that the smoke was from the YORKTOWN but did not have any details as the extent of damage. Our crew members reporting hearing alarming reports about the fire/smoke on several radio stations. Evidentially it was a slow news day.

I knew that the fire was limited to a non-secure area and suggested to the CDO (a senior Commander) that we round some up some escorts and bring the media aboard. He emphatically told me that this was a Navy ship and that the public and media had no business being aboard. He told me that I knew nothing about how the Navy and military worked. I responded that reporters were my area of specialty and that the news reports about the smoke were causing unnecessary concern in the community. But he held fast to his position.

Fortunately for me, I happened to be on the quarterdeck when the messenger of the deck received a call from the CO from his house. The boatswain mate gave me the phone and I explained to the Captain about the location of the fire and that it had been contained. I also told him about the reporters at the gate. He asked me why we had not let them come aboard and I told him it had been expressly forbidden by the CDO. He told me to immediately get the CDO on the phone. The CO quickly told him that all the families in the area of our crewmembers and workers at the shipyard were worried about the smoke and to allow the media aboard to report the facts.

 

 

 

An Ensign for Eternity by Capt. Dale Potts  USNR (ret.)

LAST WESPAC PORT CALL

Our second visit to Japan was to be our last port call. Many crew members did a lot of last minute shopping for souvenirs and electronic gear because the exchange rate was something like 360 to one. It was sort of melancholy because a lot of crewmembers were going to be transferred or getting out when we returned to Long Beach. There was one noteworthy incident. There was an Ensign in the deck dept who was built like a human tank. He was about 5’6” tall and weighed 240 pounds - all muscle. He got into a quarrel with a woman bar owner who was overcharging him. Both were highly intoxicated. Evidentially, she came at him. He pushed her away hard enough to break a table and injure her back. He ended up in a Japanese jail overnight and the word was that the American Embassy paid the bar owner several thousand dollars to keep the action from becoming an international incident. 

That Ensign, I understand, stayed at that rank for the reminder of his Navy service.

 

 

 

"YORKTOWN'S" FOURTH OF JULY
AT YORKTOWN, VIRGINIA
BY Dale Potts, Capt. USNR (ret.)

Chamber of commerce for the town of YORKTOWN wanted the ship to visit over the 4th of July, 1969. We couldn’t arrange for the carrier for the holiday so they got our CO -- Captain Fifield; his wife, his college age daughter, marine driver and me. Captain Fifield looked very much like a Navy Captain. He was fairly tall with square shoulders and bushy white eyebrows. He looked something like the movie actor James Whitmore but was taller.

We drove to Yorktown, VA on the fourth of July in a big white Navy car with the CO, his wife and daughter in the back seat. The driver, a husky Marine Corporal, and I, had the front seat. Captain Fifield gave a patriotic speech on the town square that afternoon and everyone enjoyed an old fashioned afternoon picnic with American flags draped everywhere.

That evening we attended a ball in our dress uniforms. There were no single young women at the ball so the CO's orderly and I spent the evening alternating dancing with the CO's daughter.

Editor's note: When the USS Yorktown was decommissioned the heroes of the US Navy worked to get the City of Yorktown Virginia to take the USS Yorktown and turn it into a naval aviation museum.  The City of Yorktown rejected the idea and the Yorktown is now a museum at Patriot's Point South Carolina.  The State of South Carolina made a good decision as the Yorktown gets 300,000 visitors a year and is the biggest tourist attraction in the State.

 

 

Raining inside the photographer's berthing space?

Phil Spivak was a Photographers Mate 3rd Class and was on the Yorktown's last cruise in the far east in 1968.  He told his fellow photographers that he was anxious to visit Hong Kong because "I want to see those shops where all the stuff is made that says 'Made in Hong Kong.'"  Here is his story...

"I started the cruise in the very bottom rack, and when we got to Hong Kong I had the duty. All the other sections went on liberty.  An airman who worked in the Photolab had his bunk above mine, and he came back from liberty as drunk as a skunk.

Was it raining inside the Yorktown?

He hit the rack and sometime during the night peed his pants and it started to drip down.  I jumped out of my rack, saw what was happening and woke him up, made him clean up.  I then switched racks (using my bedding naturally). So from that night forward he could come back from liberty as drunk as he wanted.  I spent the rest of the cruise with my rack above him!"

 

 

 

 


YORKTOWN SAILORS DEFEND THE UNITED STATES WHILE ON LIBERTY
by Dale Potts USNR (ret.)

There was a major protest against nuclear weapons when YORKTOWN visited Germany. Protestors in a neighboring community hung Uncle Sam in effigy in the town square in front of a large group of YORKTOWN sailors on liberty.

The Yorktown sailors instinctively surged forward, cut down the Uncle Sam dummy and disposed of him. Their quick action and strength of their convictions surprised the protestors and we were not bothered by them for the remainder of the visit. I do not know why they expected passive response from military personnel.

 

Call me ACE!

One of the pilots named John aboard the ship wanted desperately to be called an "ACE."  As everybody knows it takes 5 shoot downs to be called an ACE.  Well, to hear John tell it, he was an ACE.  As he used to say, "I shot down 4 Jap planes and was shot down 3 times myself...that makes SEVEN shoot downs, so I'm an ACE!"

The Yorktown launched her last fully loaded warplane three hours after the war was supposed to be over at 0500 on 15 Aug 1945.  "we couldn't tell if all the Japs got the word."

Story by Don Zigler

 

Through a pilots eyes; what is it like just before the air strike on Marcus

...at 0415 (4:15 a.m.) the pilots emerged onto the flight deck.  They felt the ship heeling over sharply  to head into the wind, yet they couldn't see a thing, not even the big white stars painted on their aircraft and soon they could make out the phosphorescent wakes of the other ships.

Strapped into their cockpits by their plane captains, the waited.  "Christ!" cursed one to himself.  "The waiting is the worst of all.  I wish I could take a leak.  That goddamn pistol is sticking in my ribs. My goddamn foot is going to sleep.  Jesus, it's dark.  Going to be bitch of a rendezvous.  Black as a witch's teat.  The air smells good this morning."

"Prepare to start engines!" blared the bullhorn at the air officer's order, and the pilots primed their engines.  "Stand clear of propellers!"  Plane captains patted their pilots on the head and jumped down.  Airdales crouched by the airplane wheels, ready to pull out the chocks.

"Start engines!' ignition cartridges fired, engines coughed, props turned over-and over, until the Yorktown's flight deck reverberated with the deafening roar of some 48 piston engines...

The Fighting Lady ©1986  page 37

 

 

Confessing too soon on the Yorktown

A Yorktown plane crashed near the ship October 1943 during the Gilbert Islands operation.  The plane's fuel tank exploded and the blast was felt on the Yorktown by the men below decks.

"...and as the Yorktown settled back, the men in the lower spaces- jarred by the blast-figured that a Jap torpedo had found its mark and feared that one of the ship's thousand steam lines would break.  Two machinist mates and "one colored mess attendant was assigned to our station as his battle station. 

All of a sudden the lights went out and we soon felt salt water at our feet.

Click To PreviewWhen the water reached up over our knees we figured that this was the end.  The poor colored fellow started to pray and confessed out loud everything he must have done in his whole life.  At the time it wasn't very funny, but the lights came back on and were we relieved to find out that the salt water was coming from a split fire main and not the ocean."

 

The Fighting Lady ©1986  page 79




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