[John Rogers]

Ahhhh you kids! I retired in 1985 and the new class of destroyers and cruisers were just coming out and were still manned at "old" levels. The electronics were getting much more integrated and complicated as to what we had on the nuclear powered cruisers such as Bainbridge or Virginia. All our CO's were nuclear trained, had been a chief engineer and probably one other department head so they had been exposed to "HG" himself and were pretty tight with the written rules. We had enough manning for all departments to stand 4 x 8 or 6 x 12 all the time. I remember when one of the first "automated" ships came out to San Diego around 1980 or so with early computer run engine rooms and half way from Norfolk this started breaking and the engines had to be run manually and they flew shipyard people out to cover the extra manning needed! I think it was one of the first LPH type of ships and the CO tried parking it with the island away from the pier. The forward port corner of the flight deck knocked over the large radio/radar testing tower at the end of the pier onto several cars! I thought then, the new navy is coming and automation is not going to be a good thing!