Chatter heard on the bridge during typical bridge watch
(by Boatswain Mate, Petty Officer 3rd Class Rey Colon)

OD: (looks at the helmsman) I have the deck and the con

Helmsman: aye aye sir

OD: RIGHT STANDARD RUDDER !!

Helmsman: aye aye sir right standard rudder, my rudder is right 15 Degrees

OD: Very well, come to course 090

Helmsman: aye aye sir 090
(at this I take a grease pencil and write 090 right on the gyro repeater)

Full rudder is 20 Degrees
 

Apprentice Helmsman off course in the middle of the night but nobody notices
by Petty Officer 2nd Class Daniel A. Bernath  1968 to 1970

I was assigned to the USS KEARSARGE out of boot camp in 1967 but after one tour on Yankee Station off the coast of North Vietnam I asked to be assigned to the USS YORKTOWN. I was a photographer, airman in the photo lab and assumed that I would be a photographer on the Yorktown.

I met the Yorktown in Japan. Instead of going to the photo lab on the Yorktown I was put in the Second Division on the Yorktown. As part of my duties in Second Division was acted a boatswains mate and standing watches on the 6 inch gun or bridge watch where we would operate the engine order telegraph or actually steer the ship as helmsman. I got 8 hours as a helmsman before being reassigned to the Yorktown photo lab once my promotion as 3rd Class photographer came through.  (Looking back), I really loved my time as a Boatswain mate.  I got to be a REAL salt spray in the face sailor.  I helped out on underway replenishments, helped out as we left ports and entered them, got to sit on watch on a six inch gun and also chipped a lot of rust and painted a lot of bulkheads.

We were in the combat zone, on Yankee Station, off the coast of North Vietnam and Communist China.  Lots of guys would not want to work on the bridge because of the pressure. I loved it and would trade my watch manning the 6 inch gun for other guys bridge watch.

I wanted so much to be on the helm for 10 hours because that would have made me a qualified helmsman and I would be on the helm during flight operations. At this point I would have to step aside during launch and recovery of planes. For 30 years I have regretted not getting those 2 extra hours on the Yorktown helm.

At about 3 O’clock in the morning, (0300) on our way from Vietnam to Japan I was on the helm. We were all half asleep as was the deck officer. In a normal change of course, so we wouldn’t be going in a straight line, the officer ordered a course change to something like 340. One of my shipmates then wrote the new course order in grease pencil onto the compass. I turned the Yorktown smartly about but in my sleepy state put the Yorktown at something 320 degrees. So there I am making the normal wheel movements to keep the Yorktown on course when I glanced at the compass number and see that I have been steering her off course for several minutes! I am 18 years old, don’t want to get into trouble by telling the ODD so I decide that I will simply turn her into the correct course gradually so that nobody will notice...after all it is three o clock in the morning.

So I turn the helm to the correct course and watch as the ship makes a (seemed like) steep turn. It is so steep that a pencil sitting on the navigators desk to my right rolls off the desk and onto the deck. The sleepy sailor standing to my right at the engine order telegraph and the sailor standing to my right both look at me through the corner of their eyes. The ship keeps going swiftly through the dark night and my little crisis was past.

What is it like to be a helmsman of the Yorktown? by Daniel A. Bernath

  Getting up at 2:00 a.m (0200) after working 12 hours already, to stand a watch is something that most sailors hated.  Day or night; even though we were on the high seas, you wore a dress white hat to do a bridge watch.  It was a very formal place- the bridge of the USS Yorktown- especially during flight operations and in the combat zone.

  If I had a bridge watch, I looked forward to it.  The wheel of the Yorktown is big and brass.  It is not like a car's steering wheel, at an angle.  The Yorktown's helm was straight up and down and was about 4 and a half feet above the deck.  It had ridges on the back just like your car's steering wheel.  It felt like a car with manual, not power, steering.

  You would think that a ship as big as the Yorktown would stay on course once you set her on course.  But there is constant currents hitting the ship at all sections and especially on the rudder so like your car, you must constantly make "corrections" by turning the wheel to keep her on course.

  The boys in Second Division took a lot of pride on how we "turned her about."  If we got an order by the Officer of the Deck or the Captain to make a severe turn then we didn't want to mosey into the new course.  We want to turn into the course swiftly and "smartly", so as to impress all the other sailors on the bridge!!

For example, let us say that the OOD or the Captain orders a 30 degree change of course.  You would radically turn the wheel and watch the ship turn and dramatically heel to the side.  You would watch the compass repeater as the Yorktown swiftly raced to the new course. 

  When you were about 10 degrees away from the newly ordered course you would swiftly TURN THE HELM and the rudder of the Yorktown in the OTHER DIRECTION (away from the new course) and watch the ship course change rate slow down until the ship would simply ease into the new course. You would then turn the wheel back in the opposite direction again to bring the Yorktown rudder amidships as the ship hit exactly the newly ordered course.  3 major maneuvers on the wheel to make one course change. 

 The Yorktown would simply settle on the new course doing her 30 knots...smooth as silk and fast as hell!

  All the other sailors on the bridge who were helmsmen would be impressed and murmur their approval or insult you mercilessly if you were at all clumsy or over-shot the new course by even one degree.  As I said earlier, I was an "airman" assigned to the boatswain mate 2nd Division so the other guys called me "the Airedale."  If I didn't drive this 872 foot ship exactly right and show as much panache as the other helmsmen I would get ribbed about being an "Airedale" and thus an unworthy boatswain mate.  I couldn't have that!

  I had 8 hours on the Yorktown's helm so I developed some skill.  But we all have to start out.  I remember a new helmsman was on the wheel.  Like most people are when they first learn how to drive a car it is easy to "oversteer" the Yorktown.  As I said earlier, the Yorktown is constantly being pushed off course by currents  so you must constantly make minor corrections to keep her on course...just like with your car.  But this new helmsman was oversteering. 

  The Yorktown would go off course and he would turn the wheel in the opposite direction to counteract that.  Then he would see that he had overshot on his correction so he would turn the wheel in the other direction but oversteer in the other direction.  This went on and on, back and forth overshooting the course to the left and then to the right and then again and again.

Nobody noticed that Captain Fifield was FUMING as he sat there in his captain's chair.  We all stood upright at attention when the Captain stormed from the officer's section of the bridge and into the wheel house and loudly ordered the senior enlisted petty officer to "relieve this man!"

The Captain then took the novice helmsman to the part of the bridge where you can look aft at the ocean and see the Yorktown's wake.  With his arm around the shoulder of this trembling sailor, the Captain said  "Kid, do you see what you're doing to my ship?"  The Captain held his hand in the air, fingers upward.  The Captain waved his hand back and forth in front of the ashen colored face of the trainee helmsman.  "You see how the wake looks like a snake, first this way and then that way?" 

"Do better!" 

 The Captain then stormed off his bridge with his US Marine orderly scampering closely behind.

 I am not sure that the "helmsman in training" ever took the helm again after that or if he had to change his skivvies.

Airman, assigned to Boatswain mate 2nd Division for 3 months

 

 

"Sir! I've Lost Control of the Ship!"    helmsman cries out on the Yorktown bridge

To lose control of the ship was something that didn't happen on every watch  but when you did, all the lights in the magnetic compass and the gyro repeater would go out and the wheel had a humm on it . That would prompt a loud quick response from the helmsman to the OD (officer of the deck)

Sir ! I have lost control of the ship !!

He in turn would tell the man at the control panel next to the helmsman to call "control" and have them steer the ship. So while at unrep (underway replenishment) I was at the helm when I lost control with the rudder 7 degrees to port, away from the oiler  I remember that the captain was sitting in his chair at the bridge. I yelled and the Captain jumped out of the chair like it was general quarters. The OD looked at me as though it was my fault that the ship had a oil spill on the starboard side. Yeah, that was me.


Some time later the Yorktown tested an emergency explosive brake-away devise (to separate the oiler from the Yorktown). Most of them where duds, two of them worked.


One day, I was at the unrep station as black fuel oil, ammo and materials were coming from the oiler over to the Yorktown (this must have been when the Yorktown was in the Korean waters in 1968) when this huge wave knocked down most of the unrep men.  One man, Seaman VINE broke his leg and had to get out of the Navy because of it.  by Boatswain Mate 3rd Class Rey Colon

See BM3 Colon's helmsman's certificate click here

Editor's note: the "New" USS Yorktown has no wheel to steer!  click here

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