National Vietnam Veterans Day 2026

As we celebrate National Vietnam Veterans Day again today, I’m thinking of my late, older brother Eddie Davis (seen in the below photo). He served as a soldier in Chu Lai, South Vietnam in 1968-1969.

I had a modest role in the conflict, having served as a teenage sailor on the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk (see the below photos) on “Yankee Station” off the coast of North Vietnam in 1970-1971.  

The Vietnam War was and is misunderstood and has been politized deeply. And returning veterans were often blamed and defamed for the policy errors made by the leaders of both political parties. 

Like most of the combat pilots I spoke to on the aircraft carrier, as well as many veterans, I believe we should have gone all out and won the war instead of fighting a protracted war of attrition featured nightly on the TV news.

You can read my Counterterrorism magazine piece on the Vietnam War via the link below: 

Paul Davis On Crime: My Piece On The Vietnam War And The Lessons Learned For Iraq, Afghanistan And The War On Terrorism

You can also read my post on the aircraft carrier at war (with good photos) via the link below:   

Paul Davis On Crime: On Yankee Station: A Look Back At The Aircraft Carrier USS Kitty Hawk During The Vietnam War, 1970-1971 

And lastly, you can also read On Yankee Station, a chapter of a novel I hope to soon publish. 

Paul Davis On Crime: Chapter 12: On Yankee Station                                                                           

My Crime Fiction: 'The City of Bizarre Happenings'

The story below is another chapter from my novel Olongapo, which is about young sailors from the USS Kitty Hawk.

The aircraft carrier periodically left “Yankee Station” in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of North Vietnam in 1971 during the Vietnam War and sailed to Subic Bay in the Philippines.

The warship pulled into Subic Bay (called “Septic Bay” by some sailors) for repairs, replenishment of weapons and stores, and to let the pent-up sailors loose on the wild-open town Olongapo, called the “City of Bizarre Happenings.”

The story originally appeared in American Crime Magazine.     

City of Bizarre Happenings

By Paul Davis

I recall that some Navy wit called Olongapo the “City of Bizarre Happenings.”

I certainly discovered that to be true as Ingemi, Hunt and I strolled down Magsaysay Drive on a typical Olongapo evening.

We began the evening at a restaurant on the naval base, where we had a fine steak dinner and a glass of red wine. After that hearty meal, we strolled from the on-base restaurant to the gate leading into Olongapo.

Once outside the gate, we crossed the short bridge over “Shit River.” Despite the smell, filth and pollution, several small children were on boats in the shallow river and begged the American sailors crossing the bridge to toss coins in the river. Some sailors tossed coins and the children dove into the polluted water and came up smiling with the coin in hand.

Hunt frowned as we watched the Filipino children dive in. When a sailor near us began to toss in a coin, Hunt grabbed his arm. “Don’t encourage them to jump in that filthy water.” Hunt said sharply. “They’re just poor, dumb kids.”

The sailor saw the enraged look on Hunt’s face and pocked his coin and walked across the bridge into Olongapo. We too walked across the bridge into Olongapo.

We passed numerous street vendors selling sunglasses and assorted items, as well as vendors selling “meat-on-a-stick.” The meat was probably beef or chicken, but some of the older American sailors insisted the mystery meat was monkey, dog, cat or rat. I had to admit that the street vendor’s fried meat, whatever it was, smelled good. But upon the wise counsel of my older shipmates, I passed on eating it.

Further on we saw a crowd of American sailors near a four-foot wall over an opening between two buildings. Also at the wall was a Filipino who held a basket full of noisy, little yellow chicks. The American sailors crowded around the Filipino and peered over the wall. I looked down as well and saw a small crocodile lying in a muddy pond of water. 

One of the sailors gathered at the wall bought a chick from the Filipino for a dollar. The sailor tossed the chick into the pond and the crocodile moved forward and grabbed the tiny chick in its jaws. The sight of the crocodile feeding on the chick and the sound of crunching and gobbling was shocking. 

Other sailors lined up quickly and bought chicks and began hurling them to the hungry and waiting crocodile. I was taken aback by the scene, but curious, so I watched, like one is compelled to watch the proverbial car wreck. 

“That’s fucking sick,” I heard one sailor say. 

“But you is watchin’ it, ain’t you?” Another sailor replied. 

“Yeah, but still…” 

“You eats chicken, don’t ya?” the other sailor asked. “So why can’t the ole croc enjoy hisself a baby chick?” 

“Crazy fucking town,” Ingemi said as we walked away.

 

While further cruising along Magsaysay Drive, we spied a sailor ahead of us react in a panic as he discovered that a teenage pickpocket had lifted his wallet. The pickpocket took off down the crowded street and ran between the people like a football player dodging the defense as he headed towards the goal post.

His good run ended when the young thief ran directly into Hunt, who punched the pickpocket in the chest. The pickpocket crumpled and fell to the street. The sailor rushed over, and thanking Hunt profusely, bent over and retrieved his wallet from the gasping Filipino thief who lay in the street.

“That’s one “dodger” who isn’t so artful,” I said.

Hunt laughed.

The sailor looked at me dumbfounded.

“Dicken’s Artful Dodger from Oliver Twist?” I said, trying to explain the reference. “The London pickpocket?”  

He looked away from me and faced Hunt and once again thanked him for stopping the thief.  Then he walked away.

“That dope probably thought Oliver Twist is a vodka cocktail with a slice of lemon,” I said to Hunt.

We shook our heads and walked on.

Just another evening stroll on the streets of the City of Bizarre Happenings.

 

We finally reached the Starlight and Zeny, Marlena and Hunt’s girl Carmelina ran up to us. We all sat at a table where another radioman from our division sat with a girl. The radioman, Anthony “Rock” Hudson, was an amiable but dim 24-year-old from Milwaukee. 

Hudson thought he was called Rock because he was as handsome as the movie star Rock Hudson, but in fact the sailors gave him the nickname after a sailor said, “Hudson is as dumb as a rock.” 

“Howdy!” Hudson said to us.

“Doody,” I replied, completing the name of the TV character we all grew up on. 

“Nah, I aint’ got no duty,” Hudson said. “I got liberty tonight.”  

“I like you, Hudson, but you’re a dumb shit,” Hunt said. 

Hudson looked perplexed, as he usually did. 

“What year was the War of 1812 fought?” Hunt asked Hudson. 

“Hell, I don’t know.” 

“Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb?” Hunt asked, suppressing a laugh. 

“I don’t give a shit, as long as it ain’t my ass.” 

We all laughed. 

“Hudson, you’re too dumb for the Viet Cong Navy, let alone the United States Navy,” I said. 

“Yeah, Davis,” Hudson replied. “But you’re right here with me, so what does that make you?” 

“Point taken.” 

We drank Sam Miguel beer and danced with the girls as the fine house band played their renditions of popular songs. 

At a table next to us was a big, belligerent, pug ugly and thoroughly drunk sailor who appeared to have a grudge against sailors from the Northern states of America. 

In a loud voice that carried over the band’s loud music, the big drunk hurled insults. 

“Damn fuckin’ Yankees and colored boys fuckin’ up my Navy,” the drunk said repeatedly.     

I was friends with several sailors from the South, and we often insulted each other and the states we hailed from. That was good-natured rivalry, but this Southerner was still bitterly fighting the Civil War. 

I was getting tired of hearing this smacked ass, and it must have shown on my face. Hunt tapped my arm to get my attention, and he told me to ignore the drunk. 

“Don’t make eye contact with him,” Hunt advised. “He’s drunk and he’s looking for a fight. Don’t let him spoil our night.”

Although I was the youngest of the Kitty sailors at my table, I had the feeling I was going to be the one to take on this drunken giant. I was fast tiring of his repeated insults and taunts. I noticed that the drunk was sitting alone at the table, and he was talking to himself, as his friends and even the bar girl he had been with probably found him to be obnoxious and unruly. 

At our table, Hudson took his girl’s hand, and they moved away to avoid a possible confrontation. Perhaps Hudson wasn’t as dumb as we thought.   

As Marlena returned to our table from the Ladies’ room, the drunken giant shot up from his chair and grabbed her arm. He pulled her roughly onto the dance floor.

She broke loose from him as Ingemi walked over.

“Back off, buddy,” Ingemi said to the drunk sailor nicely. “She’s with me.”

“Fuck her and you, Yankee,” the drunk slurred as he threw a wild punch at Ingemi and missed.

Ingemi, who never acted or talked like a tough guy - or had to - decked the drunk with a good left hook. The drunken giant went down from the one punch, and he stayed down. Rosalita rushed over and pushed Ingemi back to our table. A waiter ran up to the bar manager and said something in Tagalog.

“Sit down, Dino,” Rosalita said. “The Shore Patrol coming in.”

Ingemi sat down next to Marlena. He took out a cigarette, lit it, and tried to look calm. We all did.

Two Shore Patrol petty officers came in and saw the drunk sailor lying flat on the floor. They looked around as everyone tried to look and act natural.

Suddenly, Marlena leaped up from her chair, wrapped her arms around Ingemi’s neck, and shouted, “Don’t take him! He’s innocent!”

Ingemi shook his head sadly as the Shore Patrol came over, lifted him out of his seat and placed handcuffs on him. Ingemi was escorted out of the Starlight.

The Shore Patrol petty officer took Ingemi’s Navy ID card out of his shirt pocket, and they drove him to the Kitty Hawk. Ingemi stepped out of the jeep, and his handcuffs were removed. The Shore Patrol escorted him up the enlisted brow and handed over his ID to the petty officer at the ship’s quarterdeck.

Without his ID card, Ingemi was unable to return to Olongapo. The Shore Patrol didn’t bother to put Ingemi on report, as being restricted to the base for the rest of the night and denied overnight liberty in Olongapo was punishment enough.

“You can pick up your ID tomorrow morning,” the quarterdeck petty officer told Ingemi. 

Ingemi picked up his Navy ID card at the Kitty Hawk quarterdeck the following morning and headed back into Olongapo. He knocked on my hotel room door and told me to get dressed as we were all going to White Rock, a beach resort just outside of Olongapo.

After Zeny and I showered and dressed, we left the room and met Ingemi and Marlena in front of the hotel. The four of us hailed a jeepney. Our first stop was the home Marlena and Zeny shared with their mother. The home was spare but clean and comfortable. The girls put on bathing suits under their clothes and then we all piled back into the jeepney and drove to White Rock. 

White Rock was situated by a beautiful tropical beach with white sand and palm trees. A nice breeze from the sea cooled us as we stood on the beach and enjoyed the exotic scenery. Ingemi took photos of me and the girls on the beach under the palm trees, and then we switched places, and I took photos of him and the girls.

White Rock had a large swimming pool and Ingemi and I went into a store at White Rock and bought swim trunks. The four of us enjoyed swimming and frolicking in the pool. Ingemi took a photo of Zeny and Marlena on my shoulders as I stood in the pool, and then I took a similar photo of Ingemi with the girls.

We sat around the pool, happy and dripping wet, and drank San Miguel beer. Zeny, sitting in a deck chair next to me, began giggling as she brought up Linda, another bar girl that I had been with before meeting Zeny, coming to my hotel room and banging on the door. 

She mimicked Linda.

"Paul, Paul, open up. I want to talk to you!" 

The two girls and Ingemi laughed, and I joined in and laughed as well. 

We swam, ate, drank, and laughed all day at the White Rock. 

Despite the bizarre happenings we encountered in Olongapo the night before, we had a fine day at this tropical paradise.

© 2025 Paul Davis 

Note: You can read my other posted chapters via the below links:

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'Butterfly'

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'Salvatore Lorino'

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: The Old Huk

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: Join The Navy And See Olongapo

Paul Davis On Crime: Boots On The Ground

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'The 30-Day Detail'

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'Cat Street'

Paul Davis On Crime: Chapter 12: On Yankee Station

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'The Cherry Boy'

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'The Hit'

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: Welcome To Japan, Davis-San

Paul Davis On Crime: A Look Back At Life Aboard An Aircraft Carrier During The Vietnam War: 'The Compartment Cleaner'

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'Murder By Fire'

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'Admiral McCain'

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'Hit The Head'

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'A Night At The Americano'

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'Missing Muster' 

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'The Barracks Thief'

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'The Refrigerator Thieves'

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'Go Forth, Goforth'

My Crime Fiction: 'Murder By Fire'

The story below is another chapter from my novel Olongapo, which I hope to soon publish.

The story originally appeared in American Crime Magazine.

Murder By Fire

By Paul Davis

I was sitting at my desk in the Radio Communications Division's Message Processing Center aboard the USS Kitty Hawk in 1971 as the aircraft carrier was on “Yankee Station” in the Gulf of Tonkin, launching aircraft that flew combat sorties against the North Vietnamese, when I came across a copy of a message for the ship’s captain.  

My small desk was located in a cubbyhole partially hidden by a series of pneumatic tubes, which we called “Bunny Tubes.” We used pneumatic power to shoot high priority messages, such as the message I was reading, in a two-foot-long missile-like container to the captain’s office and to other senior officers aboard the ship. 

As I was responsible for the administrative security of messages that were distributed, filed and eventually destroyed, a copy of the message landed on my desk. The message informed the captain that former Engineman 3^rd Class Robert Bean, a former sailor assigned to the Kitty Hawk, had died in prison.    

I remembered Bean as I attended a U.S Navy firefighting school in 1970 with him prior to our setting sail to Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War.

After the deadly fire that killed 134 sailors and injured many more on the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal in 1967, all carrier sailors were ordered to attend firefighting schools. After all, one can't call the fire department while at sea. We were the fire department. 

As the USS Forrestal was conducting combat operations on Yankee Station, a fire erupted on July 29, 1967. An electrical failure caused a Zuni rocket attached to an F-4 Phantom to launch as the jet fighter was sitting on the flight deck. The rocket struck another aircraft on the flight deck, an A-4 Skyhawk. The aircraft’s highly flammable jet fuel spread quickly across the flight deck, which ignited a series of explosions that blew sailors and aircraft apart.

At the school, we sat through flight deck footage of the Forrestal fire and watched bombs, missiles and jet fuel ignite, and we saw sailors die from the fire and explosions. I still recall the gruesome images to this day. 

I liked that officers, chiefs and other senior enlisted people trained alongside junior teenage seamen like me at the firefighting school. At one point, all of us were assigned a part of the long hose and told that we had a certain number of seconds to put it together before the instructor turned on the water. The first two attempts failed, and we all were soaked and knocked down by the great force of the water. Laughing together, we were successful on the third attempt. We were wet but happy to have worked successfully as a team.   

I was 18 years old at the time, and Bean was a couple of years older. He was squat with dirty blonde hair and a pimply face. I recall that he was surly and inattentive. More than once, the instructors screamed at him to get him to focus. He was also chewed out by a Kitty Hawk senior chief who was also taking the firefighting course.

“Son, you’re not taking this training seriously. This course can not only save your worthless fuckin' life, but it can also save the lives of your shipmates should there be a fire on the ship,” the crusty chief said in a gruff voice. “So get your head outta your ass and get with the program.”     

Bean stayed to himself that week and he didn’t join the camaraderie of his fellow sailors. He was not much of a team player, although the course stressed teamwork.    

“Always keep the hose’s stream of water between the fire and you,” I recall one of the Navy fire instructors telling us, "If you let the flames get around you, they'll reach out and hit you like a boxer's jab."

And that’s what happened to me.

We were crowded into a square cement structure that simulated a ship’s compartment. I held the nozzle of the long hose, and I began to wave the hose in short left to right movements. As I waved the hose too sharply to the left, I allowed the fire to slip past me on my right. The flicker of flame seemed almost human - perhaps even supernaturally evil - as it lashed out like a whip and struck my right arm.

The pain and shock of getting burned and seeing my arm on fire caused me to drop the hose’s nozzle and jump back. Fortunately, the instructor grabbed the discarded nozzle quickly and he ordered me out of the burning structure. To my further embarrassment, the heavy smoke and the hood of my poncho impaired my vision and I hit my head on the oval hatchway as I was exiting the structure. The other instructors and medical corpsmen rushed to me, as they believed I was seriously injured.

As it turned out, my burns were superficial and the head injury was only a bump, but my pride received some serious blows that day. I returned to the fire and completed the course without further incidents.

After graduating from firefighting school, I went on to serve on a Damage Control Team aboard the carrier and fought some real fires, but thankfully those fires were nothing along the lines of the horrendous and deadly fire on the USS Forrestal. With an abundance of bombs, missiles and JP jet fuel onboard, even a small fire on a carrier can escalate and become a major catastrophe, as it did on the USS Forrestal.

 

I later learned that Bean, who never had a girlfriend until he joined the Navy and met a portly and exuberant college student in San Diego, did not want to leave her when the aircraft carrier departed San Diego on route to Hawaii, then the Philippines, and lastly, to the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of North Vietnam. 

After the aircraft carrier made a port of call to Hawaii, Bean was so angry and heartbroken that he became drunk in a Honolulu bar just off Waikiki Beach. 

When the bar closed, Bean took a cab back to the aircraft carrier at the Pearl Harbor naval base and he staggered aboard and leaned against bulkheads in the passageways as he traveled to his workstation below decks to an engine room compartment. The compartment space had three sailors on watch, and they told Bean to go to his rack and sleep it off as he was annoying them with his sad sack love story. Bean sat in a chair and appeared to pass out, so the enginemen on duty ignored him. 

When one of the enginemen left the compartment to go to the head, and the other two were talking to each other with their backs to him, Bean in his drunken state had an idea to punish his uncaring shipmates and cripple the carrier so it would head back to San Diego for repairs rather than go on to Southeast Asia. 

Angry at the enginemen, as well as with the entire U.S. Navy, Bean took out his lighter and reached into a trash can filled with paper. He lit a piece of paper and dropped it back in the trash can, which quickly set fire to the other papers. Bean then lifted the trash can and tossed it into a corner near a supply cabinet and ran out of the engine room compartment. 

The trash can fire ignited some stored flammable material, and the compartment was quickly engulfed with fire and smoke. The two enginemen tried to contain the fire with fire extinguishers, but they were soon overcome with smoke, fell to the deck, and died. The engineman who had gone to the head raised the alarm.   

The fire was extinguished by a Damage Control Team that came on the scene in less than a minute. Although there was severe damage to the compartment, there was not enough damage to prevent the aircraft carrier from departing Pearl Harbor later that week and sailing towards the Philippines. 

After a brief investigation, Bean was arrested, court-martialed and sentenced to prison for arson and murder. He never saw his girlfriend again.

 

The message to the captain that I read at my desk reported that Bean, who was left unattended in a prison kitchen for only a moment, died of self-immolation, having doused himself in cooking oil and then set himself on fire. He died horribly as he was engulfed in searing flames as he fell to the floor.  

Some thought it was a fitting death for a man who had committed murder by fire.   

© 2024 Paul Davis 

Note: You can read the other posted chapters of my crime novel Olongapo via the below links:

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'Butterfly'

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'Salvatore Lorino'

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: The Old Huk

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: Join The Navy And See Olongapo

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'Boots On The Ground'

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'The 30-Day Detail'

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'Cat Street'

Paul Davis On Crime: Chapter 12: On Yankee Station

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'The Cherry Boy'

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'The Hit'

Paul Davis On Crime: A Look Back At Life Aboard An Aircraft Carrier During The Vietnam War: 'The Compartment Cleaner'

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'Admiral McCain'

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'Hit The Head'

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'A Night At The Americano'

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'Missing Muster'

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'The Barracks Thief'

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'The City of Bizarre Happenings'

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'The Refrigerator Thieves'

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: 'Go Forth, Goforth'

A Sea Story: A Look Back At American Sailors Hunting Sharks In Loch Fyne

As I’ve noted here before, after serving two years on the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk in 1970-1971 during the Vietnam War, I was separated from the Navy.

I went on to study journalism at Penn State, but I dropped out due to a lack of money. I took a job as a DOD civilian at the Defense Personnel Support Center in South Philadelphia, but as I was bored and did not see an immediate future as a writer, I re-upped and returned to the Navy in 1974. 

Serving on the USS Kitty Hawk two years prior, I had some unique experiences. The aircraft carrier sailed to Southeast Asia for a WESTPAC combat cruise, serving on “Yankee Station” in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of North Vietnam during the final years of the Vietnam War.

We worked long and hard hours while on Yankee Station as our aircraft flew combat air sorties, taking the war to the Communist North. Air combat operations were fast-paced and precarious as the carrier launched and recovered aircraft around the clock. 

I had an admin job in the Communications Radio Division, and I served on a Damage Control Team. The teams were called out to fight fires and quell other emergencies. With vast amounts of jet fuel, bombs, missiles and rockets on board, an accident or a fire on a carrier can be a truly deadly affair, which we saw happen on the USS Forrestal and other carriers during the war.  

The long Yankee Station line periods were broken up by memorable port of calls to Hong Kong, Sasebo, Japan, and frequent visits to Subic Bay in the Philippines. No one who encountered the bizarre times in the wide-open city of Olongapo will ever forget it.  

I certainly have not.

After re-enlisting, I reported to the Norfolk, Virginia naval base to await my orders. I hoped to receive orders to another aircraft carrier that would cruise the Mediterranean, called the “Med” by American sailors, but I received orders to the USS Saugus (YTB-780), a Navy harbor tugboat attached to Submarine Squadron 14 (SUPRON 14) at the U.S. nuclear submarine base at Holy Loch, Scotland. 

I went from serving on one of the largest warships in the U.S. Navy to one of the smallest boats. 

I reported aboard the tugboat in January of 1974. I regretted immediately my decision to return to the Navy – what the hell was I thinking? I went from a boring but easy job in a comfortable government office surrounded by pretty girls to doing hard physical work aboard a Navy tugboat while enduring the wet and cold Scottish winter.

But looking back after all these years, I achieved what I had set out to do, which was to have some interesting travel experiences and a bit of adventure.

During the Cold War years, Submarine Squadron 14, called "Site One," consisted of the USS Canopus, a 644-foot-long ship called a submarine tender, a floating dry dock that could accommodate submarines, and a large barge with a super crane. All were anchored in the middle of the loch.

Submarines reported to Site One from the sea before and after their patrols and tied up to the anchored submarine tender. The submarines received supplies, maintenance and repairs at the floating Navy base. The base also had several small boats that tied up to the barge.

Two of the boats were 100-foot harbor tugboats, which were the workhorses of the bustling naval base.

The crew consisted of a chief petty officer and twelve other enlisted sailors.   

The USS Saugus and the USS Natick (YTB 760) towed ships, oil barges, submarines and other craft in, out, and around the site. The tugboats also put out fires and broke up oil slicks. Most days during those two years I was a cold and wet sailor working on the deck of the tugboat at the floating submarine base.

The work was hard, physical and dangerous, but we were proud of our small boat and line-handling skills. Working with the rugged and independent crew on the tugboat felt like I was serving in McHale's Navy, one of my favorite TV shows from my youth. 

I worked on deck, stood helm watches while at sea, stood security watches in port, and during my second year onboard I was the boat's supply petty officer.

The Saugus, along with the USS Natick, were often sent to sea to rendezvous with submarines for medivacs, classified missions and transfers of the Commodore and his staff. We would throw over a short brow to the submarine and the Commodore and his staff walked precariously across the brow from the pitching, rolling and bobbing tugboat to the submarine. Once aboard, the submarine submerged.

Under the sea was calm, but it was certainly not calm on the surface. The tugboat then served as a target for the submarine’s torpedoes. In the exercises, the unarmed torpedoes were aimed to pass near us.

After the torpedo passed us, we had to go and retrieve them, which was like someone shooting a gun at you and you then had the further indignity of picking up the shells for the shooter.

Retrieving the torpedoes was not an easy task in winter, as both the tug and the tip of the torpedo bobbed up and down in the rough sea at different intervals. We went to the tug’s fantail and attempted to bring in the torpedo with a thick wire lasso. It often took several attempts before we lassoed the long torpedo.

Once the wire took hold, we used our hydraulic capstan to twirl the line up and in, bringing the torpedo out of the sea into the air, where it swung mightily from the rocking of the boat and the strong winds. We threw another line on the back of the torpedo and with some difficulty, we brought the torpedo to rest on the fantail.          

I recall in the summer of 1975 we were ordered to sail to Loch Fyne to pick up a floating torpedo that was spotted by local fishermen. Normally, the fishermen find and haul in the American torpedo, which had a message on it that read “If found, call U.S. Navy and claim award.” For some reason, the fishermen did not find this torpedo.

A squadron officer ordered our chief to assemble his crew and head out to Loch Fyne and bring in the torpedo. The chief, whom I nicknamed “Chief Cool,” a stern man who rarely spoke and had a deadpan face much like the silent film comedian Buster Keaton, was not happy with being called out on an early Saturday morning, as he was hung over and thought the mission was a bullshit one.

I had the weekend duty with another deckhand and an engineman, so I was onboard, but the chief called the rest of the crew in.

When everyone reported aboard, the chief told us to get out to Loch Fyne and cruise around, and if we saw the torpedo, haul it in. But don’t look too hard, he added. With that, the chief retired to his cabin and went to sleep.

It was a beautiful sunny and warm day as we entered Loch Fyne. The sea was calm and clear and there was a soft breeze.

Loch Fyne, which means “Loch of the Vine” in Scottish Gaelic, is off the Firth of Clyde and located on the west coast of Argyll, Scotland. 

Loch Fyne was teaming with wildlife on that summer day. As we cruised along slowly, we saw dolphins, porpoises and various fish in the water. Flocks of seagulls and other birds formed an air force that flew overhead.

We also saw a huge number of large dorsal fins protruding from the water. The dorsal fins belonged to basking sharks, a huge, fierce-looking creature that resembles a great white shark.

The basking shark (Cetorhinus maximus) is the world’s second largest shark, but despite its size and looks, the shark is quite docile and passive and eats plankton rather than fish and people. The small-brained creatures are called basking sharks due to their swimming slowly and feeding near the surface, which makes them appear to be “basking” in the sun.

The average basking shark weighs more than ten thousand pounds and grows to about twenty-six feet long.

As we cruised among the many dorsal fins, we were all out on deck snapping photos of the huge sharks. Most of us would later show the photos and neglect to mention that the sharks were harmless.

I don’t know who first had the idea, but someone at the helm in the pilothouse decided to ram one of the sharks. As we were cruising slowly, and the tug’s bow was swathed in rubber, the shark was not harmed. Everyone laughed as the shark dashed away from the tug, and we went on to bump several of the sharks in the loch.    

After a bit, most of the crew left the pilothouse, leaving me and a seaman whose name I don’t recall. The seaman decided to turn the tug towards another fin in the loch. I felt the bump as the tug shook from the encounter.   

“Oh, shit!” I heard the seaman say.

I looked towards the seaman at the helm and beyond him out of the pilothouses’ starboard window. I saw 50-feet of white underbelly as a huge creature breached the sea just off the tug.

I grabbed the tug’s big wheel and swung it to port sharply. The boat seemed to lift from the water with the maneuver just as a huge wave enveloped the pilothouse as the creature crashed back into the sea.

The seaman stood there in shock. He managed finally to say, “I didn’t know a shark could jump that high out of the water.”

“That wasn’t a shark, you fucking idiot,” I said. “You rammed an orca – a killer whale.”

I knew that an orca could punch a hole in the hull and sink us, so I was happy to see the killer whale swim away from us. 

By the way, we failed to find the torpedo.

As I noted above, I went back into the Navy seeking more travel experiences and a bit of adventure.

While serving in Scotland for two years, I had some unique adventures in Holy Loch and out in the Irish Sea. And during my time off, I traveled all over the United Kingdom and visited Italy, Spain and France.

I also spent a day at Loch Fyne among basking sharks and a killer whale. 

Note: You read my other sea stories, vignettes, humor pieces and short stories via the below link:

Paul Davis On Crime: Sea Stories: Vignettes, Short Stories And Humor Pieces About My Time In The U.S. Navy