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U. S. Navy Sea Stories
| Ship: | Who Added: | When Added: |
| Other: | SFM2 Steve Newbauer | 02.12.21 |
greyhound racing |
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The first ship I was assigned to, the USS Perry (DD-844), was a fast ship. It had oversize screws (propellers) on it which helped in the speed it was able to reach. The nautical measurement for speed is the "knot". A knot is 1.151 miles per hour so, for example, 35 knots is 40.285 miles per hour. The captain of this ship liked to race when the opportunity availed itself. Once on our way back across the Atlantic Ocean to the U. S. from a 7 month long Meditterranean Sea cruise we were operating with several other ships "steaming" along in formation. We received notification of a rain storm up ahead of us and so the challenge came to any ships interested to have a race to get to the storm where we would receive a free fresh water washdown ... compliments of nature. When a ship has been "at sea" for any length of time is gets lots of buildup of salt crystals all over it from the sea water. Salt is corrosive and nasty to have on the surface of everything so the ship has to be washed down with fresh water which requires a lot of manpower with brooms and swabs (mops) and elbow grease ... not to mention valuable fresh water which all too often was in short supply when out to sea. So a free fresh water washdown was most welcome and needed. And so, off we went racing several other ships. It was quite some distance we raced although I could not tell you how far. We had one diesel engine powered destroyer escort (DE) type ship with us which was one of the participants. Now diesel powered propulsion systems are known to be fast in acceleration compared to a steam powered system like the rest of us had. Talk was flying around our ship about this DE being able to out accelerate us, but then questioning if she could stay ahead of us. It did not take long to find out as she did take off slightly faster than us but we very quickly overtook her and left her behind and out of sight. And she was far ahead of all the others at that time. Anyway, we arrived at the rain storm and went thru it and turned around to come back thru it again the opposite direction. We then turned back around and went thru it again and upon arriving on the other side of it we waited for about 30 minutes for the 2nd place ship to arrive and it was not the DE. We were most certainly way ahead of them to have had all this time to accomplish this. That was a lot of fun! |
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