Sea Stories: Overheard VHF

[Gunboat1]

Sea Stories: #43 Overheard VHF

 

One of the eeriest things that ever happened to me at sea is a very vivid memory. One night in 1987, I was standing watch as Officer of the Deck (OOD) of my Guided Missile Frigate, operating off our home port of San Diego, California. It was a midwatch, well after midnight, and midwatches are usually quiet and fairly uneventful. Suddenly, our bridge-to-bridge radio squawked to life.

“Merchant vessel off my port bow, this is a US Navy warship on your starboard bow. What are your intentions?”

And I recognized the voice of an old friend. When I made my First Class Midshipman's cruise, I was assigned to USS McINERNEY (FFG-8), a guided missile frigate of the same class as my ship, homeported in Mayport, Florida. During a First Class cruise, a Midshipman wears officer-like uniforms, is berthed in officer's country aboard the ship, and performs the duties of a junior officer, to help prepare him to be the junior officer he will soon enough become upon his commissioning. My supervisor and mentor during this cruise was a then-Lieutenant (O-3) named Leo, called Lee.

I was somewhat in awe of Lee, who was the Operations Officer and Navigator of McINERNEY. He was an excellent Surface Warfare Officer, skilled at his trade. He was an outstanding leader, liked and respected by his men. And he was a department head of a line warship and A FULL LIEUTENANT, which at the time seemed to me an exalted rank, far above that of a lowly First Class midshipman like me. I learned a great deal from Lee during that cruise, both about seamanship and about leadership. I had not seen him since 1981, but I had heard that he had been assigned as a Department Head aboard a large west-coast amphibious ship.

Flash forward six years, and I now held the same job, on a ship of the same class, as Lee had had when I knew him. I hoped that I was doing as well as he had done. Lee had a distinctive voice, and there was no doubt that it was he I was hearing on the radio that night.

“Merchant vessel off my port bow, this is a US Navy warship on your starboard bow. I am on course 030, speed 10 knots. What are your intentions, over?”

I heard no reply to Lee's query, but recognized that he must be standing watch as OOD aboard his ship, and that he must be concerned about a merchant vessel steaming near enough to his ship to pose a risk of collision. Colliding a Navy ship with any other vessel is one of the unpardonable sins of sea service. Nothing good comes from a collision, ever. (Google "USS FITZGERALD incident" or "USS JOHN S. McCAIN incident" if you do not remember these recent examples of rank incompetence at sea. Neither is a pretty story.) Collision is a sure career killer for a Captain and for an OOD.  And lives can be lost, easily.

Lee continued a series of increasingly-urgent radio calls, trying to get the merchant to answer him and to change course to avoid collision. Merchant ships are typically manned by small crews, and it is not unheard of for a foreign merchant ship to put the helm on autopilot, and for a lone bridge watchstander to leave the bridge to attend a call of nature, or get some coffee, or catch some sleep, or to to otherwise be derelict in his duty, in direct violation of international law. It is illegal as hell, but it happens. And it was apparent to me that Lee's career and safety were diminishing by the moment as the merchant of concern was not responding.

Finally there was one last, urgent call: “MERCHANT VESSEL OFF MY PORT BOW, THIS IS THE US NAVY WARSHIP. MY RUDDER IS RIGHT, MY ENGINES ARE BACK FULL.”

Lee was now maneuvering aggressively, obligated by the Rules of The Road to break his required maintenance of course and speed, to prevent an imminent collision. And I knew that Lee was aboard a large, ungainly amphibious ship with little agility and reserve power. Long moments of silence hung heavy as my friend's career hung in the balance.

Finally, Lee's obviously-relieved voice came over the radio.

“This is US Navy warship, resuming course 030, speed 10 knots.”

I breathed a long sigh of relief, as things had obviously worked out. A year or so later, I saw Lee in Hawaii, as both of our ships visited Pearl Harbor. He told me that he remembered the night in question, and that it had been a close call. The merchant ship never did respond, nor maneuver. What was also of great interest to me was that the event had taken place over 100 miles from my ship, far beyond the normal range of the VHF bridge to bridge radio. A condition called Tropospheric Ducting had trapped and reflected the radio signal to my ship, allowing me to hear a very distant half of a conversation with crystal clarity. The mystery and magic of radio had enabled me to listen in.

[FullClip]

My ship in the navy would just go under them....eezy-peezy.

 

On the merchant tankers I was on it's amazing we didn't play a sea going version of bumper cars.  It was pre-Valdez days, and we were all pretty much drunk most of the time.

[xromad]

We were in the woods somewhere on Ft. Lewis doing something or another and started hearing some "weirdness" on the VRC-46 FM radio.  Turned out we were sharing a freq with a taxi cab dispatch center in New Freaking Orleans, LA. We were able to talk to them and vice versa.  The traffic got a bit blue as we told each other to GTFO our freq.

Normally, the VRC-46 was good for a couple of miles in the trees, a more when in the desert, but no freaking way it goes cross country.