My First (ghostly) Adventure On The U.S.S. Chicago

WESTPAC TALES: One night in the wee dark hours of the morning sometime in the spring of 1972, when I was a brand new sailor, with a month or so of shipboard experience on the U.S.S. Chicago CG-11 under my belt, I was awakened by a call to GQ (General Quarters, or battle stations).

I hurriedly put on my pants and shoes, grabbed my shirt, and headed for my GQ station. We were always having GQ drills, and a few real GQ events. But this was strange and unexpected. We had just a few minutes to get to our battle stations, so I was moving as fast as I could.

An explanation about everyday life in the Navy and abroad the U.S.S. Chicago:

I slept just forward of the warhead magazines, and I was three levels down from the corridor that ran the length of the ship. To get to my GQ station from my berth, I had to climb two ladders, then run about 30 meters aft through the corridor, and finally descend one level to my work area and my GQ station in the NTDS computer room. (NTDS stands for Naval Tactical Data Systems.)

The ship was divided into many compartments. Each time I left or entered a compartment, there were hatches I had to go through. (A hatch is a door with a watertight seal.) There was a big hatch and a little hatch. The big hatch was about the size of a house door, but the little hatch was just big enough for one person to squeeze through.

In the Navy, when GQ is sounded, there is always someone who is responsible for shutting the hatches in an area, then reporting that each hatch has been closed.

When GQ was sounded, we had just a minute or two to get through the hatches before they were closed. So I always ran as fast as I could to get up those two ladders, and through those two hatches from my berthing area. Then I went down through another hatch to my GQ station in the computer room of the CIC (Combat Information Center).

There had to be at least one person in the computer room at all times, to monitor the equipment and to stand by to restore functionality quickly if necessary. Most of the sailors in my division manned the computer repair shop that was one level down, where the team leader was usually stationed. The person on duty in the computer room would get on the voice powered headset and would report the status of the room to the repair shop, which was next to the CIC (Combat Information Center).

Generally when things got tough, the Captain and his aides would gather in the CIC, just outside the NTDS repair shop door. So the people in the repair shop had a front row seat to everything that happened. (Someone in our repair shop had figured out a way to feed the CIC intercom into the NTDS computer room. So we were able to hear what was reported to the captain from throughout the ship.)

To continue my ghostly adventure:

When I got to my GQ station that night, I learned that it had been reported that a pair of high speed boats with rocket launchers had come out of a small harbor and were racing erratically toward us. These boats had been detected by our short range radar. However, none of the other radars, which were designed to identify air attacks, could see anything. Sailors standing on the bridge with their binoculars were watching for the boats, but they could see nothing. Sailors who manned the five-inch 38 caliber guns on both sides of the ship were watching for the boats, but they could see nothing. Marines stationed at various locations on the main deck with machine guns and night vision goggles were watching for the boats, but they could see nothing.

*LTJG L.V. Jansen, our division officer, at a NTDS workstation/radar screen*

An alarm was sent out to nearby ships. Our brave little destroyer escort ship responded immediately and started racing toward the last known location of the boats. At the same time, several fighter jets were launched from an aircraft carrier, and a helicopter was sent to find the boats. A message was sent to Washington D.C.

But nothing could be found. Finally, when sunrise came, we called off the GQ and life returned to normal.

Then, a couple of nights later, the same thing happened again, and we went though the same drill again. And then a couple of nights later, the same thing happened again.

A few days later, someone somewhere finally figured out what had happened. About half a day before the ghost boats had been “detected,” some B52 planes had flown over the coastline of Vietnam at a very high altitude and, to obscure their presence, they had started releasing chaff (basically something like chopped up aluminum foil) as they reached the coastline. It had taken hours for the chaff to flutter down and be picked up by our surface radars.

As a point of interest, a similar “ghostly” event may have occurred on August 4, 1964, during what later became known as the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, when the destroyer U.S.S. Maddox DD-731 received electronic and visual signals that their ship was under attack, and fought for two hours against the perceived enemy. (They had already fought off an attack on August 2, 1964.)

*Sailor wearing a sound-powered headset after a very long night at GQ. I don’t remember who this is, but I often felt just like this.*

This second “attack” was important, because it caused the U.S. Congress to pass the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on August 10, 1964. The resolution gave President Lyndon B. Johnson the power to assist any country in Southeast Asia that was considered to be in danger from “communist aggression,” to deploy the U.S. Armed Forces to assist South Vietnam against North Vietnam, and to draft young men—like myself and most of my shipmates—into the military.

Much later, investigations reported that although the Maddox was under a real attack on August 2, there had been no attack on August 4. It was decided that freak weather or other conditions, later known as “Tonkin ghosts” might have affected the radar and sonar information received by the Maddox. North Vietnamese military commander Võ Nguyên Giáp stated in 1995 that the attack on August 2 was real, but the August 4 attack had never occurred.

We were a long time from 1995, however, and the “ghost battle” was still considered real, so we were very serious about any perceived attack. After several nights at GQ, we were glad to find out it was only chaff creating our ghosts!

Movie:

The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. MacNamara (2003)

Directed by Errol Morris (Sony Pictures Classics)

Links:

Old Blue Jacket :

http://www.oldbluejacket.com/chicago.htm

Manual for the sound powered headset :

navybmr.com/study%20material/14232.pdf

Sounds of GQ :

http://www.policeinterceptor.com/navysounds.htm

Gulf of Tonkin Incident in 1964 :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident