Put some muscle into it

Hangar Flying
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So, I remember the old wives tale that when you are christening a ship, and the bottle doesn’t break - it is considered bad luck. With that in mind…why do we keep seeing videos of gals launching ships where they don’t hit the damn boat hard enough?? Shouldn’t someone take them aside and say:

“Listen…you really gotta whack this thing with all you got or people will forever think this 500 million dollar ship is cursed…”

Whaddya think @Navynuke99 - was there any truth to the old wives tale?

BeachAV8R

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I wasn’t aboard yet at the time of the christening, but from what I understand Nancy Reagan took a couple of attempts to get the bottle to break over the bow of the ship named after her husband. There were definitely a string of bad accidents that happened in the first few years the ship was in operation.

2001
Had a couple of shipyard workers killed when working in void spaces before the Reagan was moved to the outfitting berth.

2002
A string of exploding circuit breakers started a serious fire in two electrical loadcenters, and seriously injured a shipyard worker when one exploded in his face. Further investigation showed that we’d received a shipment of old breakers that should have been sent for refurbishing by the manufacturer, not to our ship. 800+ of the type had to be replaced or refurbished on-site.

The command’s sailor of the year was sent to the brig and kicked out of the Navy for popping positive on a drug test.

A Chief Storekeeper dropped dead of a heart attack while crossing the brow onto the ship.

2003
Delays and setbacks mean the ship is commissioned at only ~80% complete. But that one I mostly blame on the Commanding Officer at the time. And this was after commissioning was pushed back three months. The crew found out about that from the Virginian Pilot, instead of from the chain of command.

One of our new firemen was killed in a car accident less than a month after checking aboard the ship.

2004
A new arrival in Engineering attempts to rob a bank in downtown Norfolk shortly before we leave to sail around the Horn.

Another one of our new firemen shot and killed his wife shortly before departure.

Strange occurrences as we passed through the Bermuda Triangle during our around the Horn transit (much longer story there- that’d be a separate post). 3/4 of the crew is afflicted by a norovirus at the same time in the first week of the cruise.

After rounding South America, a series of electrical malfunctions create serious concerns about whether or not we’ll be able to pull into San Diego under our own power. We did, but it took a bit of a workaround, and some significant repairs after we arrived. Also, we almost smoked out Nancy Reagan on one of the elevators during the homecoming ceremony. But that’s all I’m allowed to say about that. :wink:

A senior sailor (I forget which department) committed suicide aboard the ship shortly after checking onboard in the fall of 2004.

2005
This was a very, VERY bad year for the ship, in particular for my department.
Shortly after the new year, we got underway from San Diego to Pearl Harbor with supplies and cargo planes for tsunami relief. This happened five days out:
http://archive.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=74421

Two weeks after we got back to San Diego, this happened in my division. I wasn’t on duty that day, but I know exactly what happened. Interlocks should have kept it from happening, but somehow they failed to kick in and ended up pretty much destroying a unique generator set that’s supposed to last the life of the ship. We had to steal a replacement from the Bush, under construction, and it took over two months to replace and recertify all the surrounding systems. Our Reactor Officer and Executive Officer were both forced into retirement over that, and several junior personnel lost their qualifications.

Five months after that, one of our senior nuke electricians was found dead in his rack of a combination of drugs reacting with a pre-existing heart condition he had.

Three months after that, a junior hull tech from Engineering died in his sleep of a drug overdose while we were in Santa Barbara to be wined, dined, and showered with money by our sponsors, the Reagan family and the Santa Barbara Navy League.

A month after that, one of our nuke mechanics was killed when his motorcycle was run over by an 18- wheeler who’s driver fell asleep at the wheel on the 8 Freeway.

Over the course of this year, my division lost 25 out of 60 personnel, some from the above mentioned accidents, but most from problems that stemmed from poor morale, and terrible leadership in our immediate chain of command.

2006
We left San Diego on our maiden deployment on the 4th of January. Everything was pretty quiet until we got to Australia a couple of weeks later, then this happened. Contrary to what the spokespeople said, there was a MASSIVE effect on pretty much every system of the ship below the waterline, and it took us weeks to get everything completely sorted out. And it pretty much ruined the port visit for all of Reactor and Engineering.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1566004/posts

The day after leaving Brisbane, this happened, off the Great Barrier Reef. The pilot survived, and nobody else was injured in the incident.

Very shortly after that, bags of trash from the ship started washing up offshore. Needless to say, it was a long time before another carrier pulled into Australia after that.
http://www.sunshinecoastdaily.com.au/news/scd-aircraft-carrier-in-hot-water-over-garbage/320181/

The rest of the deployment was really quiet, but a lot of my friends got back to find their wives had picked up new boyfriends, and taken the car, they furniture, and all their savings in the process.

I left the ship in 2006, so I can’t really speak to anything that happened after that, as I wasn’t there to see it myself. As for the Fukushima thing, I knew several of the radiological controls folks who were monitoring the situation, and I don’t know if I believe all the stories of lawsuits of people claiming radiation poisoning. But that’s another post altogether.

So, tl;dr- yeah, my friends and I were pretty sure the Reagan was cursed for at least a portion of the time we were aboard.

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@Navynuke99 comes through with Post Of The Year.

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I’ll be waiting for that post…

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I was friends with a few of the quartermasters, so this is no s*%t about when we crossed into the Bermuda Triangle. It was after dark, on a moonless night, and a fog kicked up seemingly out of nowhere.

Now, one of my guys was dating a BM2 (Second Class Bos’n’s Mate, or the folks who run the small boats, handle all the lines and rigging and stuff, and steer and drive the ship, as well as standing lookouts) who happened to be on the bridge that night as the Bos’n’s Mate of the Watch, and she told me about this after we all got off watch.

At the same time, one of my best friends to this day was in Air Department (he was part of the crash and salvage crew who responded to that Hornet ramp strike from the video a couple of years later), and he was in the catwalks around the flight deck with his at the time girlfriend (later wife), who had one of the lookout watches back aft of Elevator 3 (on the starboard side, behind the island), and when I saw them both on the smoke pad later, they both looked like they’d seen a ghost.

I was in Central Control, where the Secondary Conning Station was, and can also verify. Shortly after midnight, we lost our primary gyrocompass, and the standby was acting funny intermittently. Even the backup “wet” (magnetic) compasses, which had repeaters in Central as well as on the bridge, were slowly circling their compass cards instead of providing readings for at least half an hour. From what I heard from Angela (the QM) and Lisa (the BM) later, even on the bridge, the GPS repeater was also malfunctioning.

Dave and Stacy (my friends on lookout) told me they heard sounds of chains being dragged across the deck from somewhere out on the flight deck, and voices speaking, but they couldn’t make out what they were saying. From what I heard from them and from folks who were on the bridge, other lookouts in the catwalks were hearing the same things, and actually the watch on the other side of the deck was begging to either secure, or to have Security send somebody up, because he was freaking out that badly. That apparently finally stopped after about half an hour, but the lookouts were still freaked out for a good while after that.

Meanwhile, down in Central, the IC (interior communications) folks, who owned the gyros, couldn’t figure out why they weren’t working, and we even restarted some of the associated systems, but couldn’t get them back online for a bit. Finally, we were ordered to bring the ship to a full stop, and waiting for either the fog to clear, or for something to start working again.

Finally, around 1 in the morning the wet compass started playing nicely again, and shortly after that the main gyro inexplicably started once again functioning as advertised. The bridge rang up an ahead bell, and when the GPS came back, it was found that we’d drifted a good distance (the QM’s wouldn’t tell me exactly how far) during the time we were blind. Needless to say, I don’t think anybody slept well after we were relieved and went to bed.

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Excellent stuff.

@BeachAV8R we’ve got to put down @Navynuke99 for the Halloween Special edition this year. :skull:

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Cool, thanks for sharing, love hearing stuff like this :smile:

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Thanks for sharing those stories, @Navynuke99 !

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Wow…those are awesome stories. I’m guessing a collective groan went through the shipyard when Miss SecDef’s edit: SecNavy I guess…daughter (or whoever that was) clanked the Washington with that bottle.

Well lads…why don’t we just push her right back into the foundry…

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