Brooklyn Navy Yard (3)

During late winter or early spring of 1964, while in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Michelson was drydocked for the periodic hull cleaning and repainting that all ships require. Also, two sets of transducers for the new multibeam sonar were installed while in drydock, the transmitting set being longitudinal along the keel and another set across (athwartship) for the receiver. All were placed forward of the superstructure, beneath the former number three hold.

Photo of a Victory Ship model
A ship in dry dock is an awesome sight. While not really large, Michelson looked like a nautical giant when viewed from the dry dock floor. There is a lot of ship below the water line that one rarely gets to see. Walking down the steps into the dock the rudder and propeller looked bigger and bigger, but ineffectual, out of their element. From the keel, resting on wooden blocks, it was 40 feet of steel up to the main deck. I walked around the ship and, crouching down, under it! This was very impressive. Work had finished on the hull and within a day or two the dock was flooded and Michelson was eased on out.

Within Michelson's navy detachment men had transferred out to other ships and shore stations while new ones were reporting aboard. Since the usual tour of duty was just one year aboard, few of those from early 1963 remained. A few of us volunteered for another tour and were retained. New officers arrived. We continued to reside in less than palatial accomodations at the navy receiving station (RECSTA) across the street from the yard. 

This was a good time to select staterooms and bunks as we were soon to move back on board. I claimed a lower bunk having a secret booze compartment concealed below a custom made book rack. Some previous sailor had done a fine job on this one. Perhaps he was a bibliophile bookworm as well as a serious consumer of spirits.

Yardbirds were finishing their work and others cleaning up their mess. New work spaces for electronic stuff had been created on the two decks below our living quarters and more staterooms added in in number two hold. More tech reps, a/k/a field engineers, were expected to occupy the new living spaces.

Some old and new electronics were installed and ready for test:

  • In the SCC (Survey Control Center), the two Loran C receivers were reinstalled. 
  • NIC (Navigation Information Center) moved to the former Hydroplot location on the third deck. The NAVDAC computer was reinstalled, along with the new SINS Mark 3 Mod 3 inertial navigator, Transit satellite navigator, Sperry mark 19 gyrocompass and a Bunker Ramo CP677 computer.
  • Hydroplot and its Bendix G-15D computer moved down to the fourth deck, formerly home of the disused doppler sonar.   
  • A new sonar room on the fourth deck contained the SASS (Sonar Array Sounding System) multibeam sonar equipment.
  • The former NIC on the 04 level became semi abandoned, although some electronics remained. Henceforth it was called "old NIC".

Being the overall project manager for navigation systems, Sperry Gyroscope ran a school on Long Island to familiarize technical detachment members on how all this stuff was going to work. Every morning for a couple of weeks we hopped on a bus from RECSTA to Sperry's classroom in the basement of a strip mall in New Hyde Park.

This was an busy time in New York while the 1964-65 world's fair was preparing to open at Flushing Meadows, also site its 1939 predicessor. Our Sperry bus ride went by there each day.

Michelson was scheduled to move to the Western Pacific to begin survey operations, working out of the navy base at Yokosuka, Japan. This was exciting! 

The old ship began to take on a new crew of MSTS Pacific merchant mariners based in the San Francisco area, rather than the New York sailors who operated the ship while in the Norwegian Sea and Mediterranean. All, both licensed and unlicensed, were new. Military Sea Transportation Service (MSTS), now called MSC (Military Sealift Command) was the navy's own proprietary steamship company, operator of troopships, auxiliary vessels and odd ones such as Michelson.

Once we left the Brooklyn Navy Yard we would move to the naval supply center in Bayonne, New Jersey to take on fuel and provisions. Then off to California and the Pacific by way of the Panama Canal. 

That was the plan, but it didn't happen quite that way.