recycled seastories: Caliber D Cannon
this is the story that posting to KisP reminded me of, and got me looking or old posts:
the Caliber D Cannon
Seawolf lived at the south end of the industrial area on Mare Island when not at sea or in the dry docks. This presented many an opportunity to let our idle minds wander into prankish lands. We had an ST1(SS) who was really into black powder weapons. I mean really into black powder weapons. He decided things were entirely too boring at berth 19, so he devised the caliber "D" cannon. This little toy was a CO2 bottle with the horn removed, and a piece of schedule 40 PVC pipe taped over the end of the hose. The inner diameter of the pipe was just a skosh bigger than a d cell battery. We would sit on the forward deck of the living barge, and fire d cell batteries out into the middle of the Mare Island channel. One night, we decided that that wasn't enough fun, so the ammo and oilers pulled into the finger piers south of us presented just too darned inviting of "targets". After a couple of duty nights, bouncing batteries off of the weather deck of the skimmer was by far and beyond the most fun most of us had on duty nights, because they (the skimmers) started calling battle stations every time one of these ended up on their boat. The ship closest to us was of course our number one target, and they were bombarded using the attack scope on the boat and walkie talkies for communication to us on the barge for range and angle. The boys on the skimmers were getting more and more agitated with what was happening (imagine that), and they were blaming the other skimmers tied up next to them (HEHEHEHE). As all good things must eventually get a visit from Mister Murphy, he visited our firing station one night on the midwatch. A battery went zinging over water, and damned if it didn't hit the bridge. Not just the bridge, but a glass window on the bridge. Well, it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the trajectory of that ballistic missile, and the next thing we knew, the entire duty section on the skimmer was manning the rails, heevy gun and grapefruits in hand. By the time they were done shooting grapefruits at us, our barge looked like the salad bar fruit bowl. ahhhhh, in port hi-jinks. sure miss that stuff.
the Caliber D Cannon
Seawolf lived at the south end of the industrial area on Mare Island when not at sea or in the dry docks. This presented many an opportunity to let our idle minds wander into prankish lands. We had an ST1(SS) who was really into black powder weapons. I mean really into black powder weapons. He decided things were entirely too boring at berth 19, so he devised the caliber "D" cannon. This little toy was a CO2 bottle with the horn removed, and a piece of schedule 40 PVC pipe taped over the end of the hose. The inner diameter of the pipe was just a skosh bigger than a d cell battery. We would sit on the forward deck of the living barge, and fire d cell batteries out into the middle of the Mare Island channel. One night, we decided that that wasn't enough fun, so the ammo and oilers pulled into the finger piers south of us presented just too darned inviting of "targets". After a couple of duty nights, bouncing batteries off of the weather deck of the skimmer was by far and beyond the most fun most of us had on duty nights, because they (the skimmers) started calling battle stations every time one of these ended up on their boat. The ship closest to us was of course our number one target, and they were bombarded using the attack scope on the boat and walkie talkies for communication to us on the barge for range and angle. The boys on the skimmers were getting more and more agitated with what was happening (imagine that), and they were blaming the other skimmers tied up next to them (HEHEHEHE). As all good things must eventually get a visit from Mister Murphy, he visited our firing station one night on the midwatch. A battery went zinging over water, and damned if it didn't hit the bridge. Not just the bridge, but a glass window on the bridge. Well, it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the trajectory of that ballistic missile, and the next thing we knew, the entire duty section on the skimmer was manning the rails, heevy gun and grapefruits in hand. By the time they were done shooting grapefruits at us, our barge looked like the salad bar fruit bowl. ahhhhh, in port hi-jinks. sure miss that stuff.
Labels: seastory, topside hijinks
posted by bothenook at 17:21
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