[John Rogers]

I spent 4 years on there during the Vietnam years. It was the OLD Navy for sure. Some interesting items were: Capt Peterson used to be first off the ship when we got to Subic Bay and would spend the WHOLE inport time with his bar girl. Once when we had a very bad storm come in we all had to come back to the ship so we could set to sea as we were tearing up the pier. The Base CO sent the SPs out in town to get him so we could leave.

We only had one racial incidents on board as back then there was a lot of racial unrest on all the ships! It was a black mess cook hit a mess decks master at arms and about 20 or so of his buddies gathered right outside the 1st class mess until CC Smith the XO came down to defuse things. His first statement was "well boys, just what are the problems here...."!

Twice, we went dead in the water when we were transiting from PH to Subic Bay when we had several reactors (they have 8 total) shut down for maintenance and a couple of the diesel generators (have 4) were ooc and something would break!

We had a 500# bomb slide through the bomb door and go clear to the bottom of the elevator when the elevator failed. We went to GQ quickly and luckily had no explosion.

Once a red shirt hit the rapid shut button on a bomb elevator door and it crushed a pod of air to air rockets and we went to GQ and luckily no explosion!

I bought a Winchester model 94 in 44MAG from the factory in Hong Kong when they were scarce as could be here in the US. Ordered it through the old China Fleet Club!