Hello, My name is Daniel Smith, I'm a sixty year old veteran of the Navy. I use the name Tristan Scott in BBs in honor of a hero of mine: my son. I was in the navy in the sixties, and served aboard an old Essex class carrier and subsequently developed an obsession for WWII naval history, and WWII history in general. I strongly believe in the importance of keeping the events of 1939-1945 alive in the minds of our children and their children. I look forward to joining the discussion!
Good to have you here, Daniel. Hunt down TA Gardner, he's old swabbie, too. Thanks for your service. What was the ship you were on?
Jeff, I spent 2 years on the old Bunker Hill. She was CV 17 during the war, but was reduced to an aviation transport (AVT-9) after the war and was never modernized. When I went aboard her she had been mothballed and was docked off North Island, across from the sub base at the mouth of San Diego Bay. Myself, 8 other sailors and a few civilians were assigned to her with the mission of building a communication center on her hangar deck for testing new communication systems. I spent a lot of time exploring that old ship, interesting that when a ship is mothballed all of her stores are kept in tact. In this case many of the Bunker Hill's store rooms were stocked with antique equipment, still in their original containers. It was also interesting that since at the time their were still a few Essex carriers in service that from time to time we would get a visit from a salvage crew from one of these active carriers looking for parts to keep their ships going. I'd like to share an interesting story that was the result of one of these visits. A crew came aboard from the Bonny Dick one weekend with some cutting equipment to salvage some engine parts and decided to break in to the Captains safe, a huge walk-in safe near the Captains Quarters. We had seen it there, but had never thought much about it and left it alone. When I came aboard monday morning, all hell had broken loose. ONI had people there investigating and a couple of us were ordered to watch over the safe and it's contents until it could all be declassified. The safe contained shelf after shelf of reports outlining the various action she had taken part in during the war. We also found a shoe box containing hundreds of 3X5 cards. Each card had a sailors name, along with personal information about him. After ONI was done we gave the box to our cheif and he surmised that the sailors on these cards were sailors who had been killed. At the time there was an alumni association for the Bunker Hill, and one of the associations officers, a former Bunker Hill Chaplain, lived on Coroanado and had visited the ship on several occasions. Our chief called him and told him we had found some momentos he may be interested in. He came to the ship and we gave him some of the reports and photos from the safe, but the real treasure for him was the box. He told us that after the kamikaze attack that put the Bunker Hill out of action and killed several hundred of her crew, the skipper asked him to get personal information on each of the crewmen that was killed. The Skipper used that information when he wrote letters to the families of all the sailors killed. When he was done he evidently stashed the box in his safe.
G'day mate and welcome My dad was an electrician in the Royal New Zealand Navy in the 70's and 80's, he served on a Friagte philamore(not sure on the spelling because I don't know to much about it) although he didn't serve with a 'front line' position more as a support one but still just as important as any other. Well hope to hear some good stories.
You are among like minded individuals. I think remembering is very important as well. Glad to have a vetran aboard. Welcome
