BosnMate
Gold Member
- Sep 10, 2010
- 6,916
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This picture was not taken by me, however it is the same class of ship I was on. Just off the stern you see a Mike Boat, or LCM. An AKA carried 8 of those large boats, along with 14 smaller LCVP's and a couple of other types of boats for a total of 24. The ship was 459 feet long, and 63 feet across at the beam, and when empty, she displaced 6,556 tons of water. Her top speed was 16.5 knots. She was manned by 404 officers and men, during my time, women didn't go to sea. She could carry almost 5,000 tons of cargo, and deliver it to the beach, through the surf, via boats called "landing craft." She was an attack cargo ship, left over from WWII, and when I went aboard there was one 5"/38 gun, 4 twin 40mm anti aircraft guns, and 12 20mm AA guns. While I was still aboard they started removing the guns, and by the Viet Nam war she had no guns left, and was renamed an LKA. She served during Viet Nam, then was stricken from the Navy register and sold for scrap, but I don't have the date on that. The pictures are B&W, on account of colored slides had to be sent to Kodak to be developed, and B&W could be developed in the Orient.
This picture is yours truly, my arm is resting on my rack, probably sometime in 1958.
We were deployed to WesPac in 56 and again in late 57/58. Once again the the picture is of the front end of a Mike boat, on the beach with the ramp partially down. The boat wasn't the reason for the picture. I was the coxswain of a boat also on the beach, and the subject of the picture taken by me, was the buildings across the beach. The location was Dingalan Bay in the Philippines, and were doing a huge practice invasion that lasted several days, lots of Marines, and lots of equipment coming and going to the beach. Out of those buildings across the beach, a fellow would come out and meet the boats, and sell us bottles of San Miguel beer. Someone said that MacArthur owned the brewery, but I don't know the truth of that.
And this picture is the back end of the above boat, showing the conn, and several sailors upholding the finest traditions of the United States Navy, enjoying a cool one on a hot Philippine day.
This last picture has a back story. You guys have to understand, officially I'm telling you sea stories, and the difference between a fairy tale and a sea story is fairy tales start out "once upon a time," and sea stories start out "this is no s***. This is a sea story. That's me on the swab. I'm on the after 40mm gun deck, 63 feet across, and probably 40 or 50 feet wide, somewhere between 2500 and 3100 squared feet. Another fellow and I were told to paint the deck. So we commenced goofing off, and by 1300/1330 we had the places cut in where you had to be careful, but not much else done. Enter a certain first class bosnmate, saw what we had done, and to put it mildly, he was upset. The first liberty boat was leaving the ship 1500, and we were told there would be no liberty until the deck was finished. Boats (the first class' nick name) left, and we hustled and got 5 gallons of dark deck paint, and used swabs to paint the deck. This wasn't paint you cleaned up with water, it was lead paint, in fact the primer coat was called "red lead." We dumped paint on the deck, swabbed it on, blocked off the ladder to the deck with a wet paint sign, showered, and in our dress uniforms we were on the 1500 boat off to an evening of liberty. The swabs were cleaned by throwing them overboard and the deck paint didn't dry for a couple of weeks, it was thick, and stayed very tacky.
