No Higher Honor (9 page)

The Point Loma course required hours of classroom study, but the lectures alternated with exciting mock battles in the simulated combat information center. Palmer's team sank fleets of computer-generated Soviet ships, downed imaginary air wings, and shredded swarms of pretend missiles. They learned fast, and finished the six-week course with more honor graduates than any previous frigate. A chief operations specialist by the name of Monigle notched the highest personal grade point average to date. Overall, the
Roberts
team had earned the highest grades ever received by a frigate crew.
²

ON THE LAST
day of June 1985, some forty-five hundred BIW shipyard workers walked off the job. Negotiations for a three-year contract had stalled, bringing most work on the
Roberts
to a halt. Builder's trials in August, acceptance trials in September, and commissioning in November—all were postponed. The delays discomfited yard executives and dismayed the SupShip officials.
³
But Rinn and the
Roberts
crew saw the delay as a gift of precious time. While workers picketed outside the BIW gates, the sailors of FFG 58 finished up the required precommissioning curriculum and then signed up for more. Gunner Reinert added certifications in small arms and ship's defense to his qualifications and spent the next several months passing his newfound knowledge to his shipmates. Soon more than half the crew was qualified to fire .45-caliber pistols, M-14 rifles, and 12-gauge shotguns.
⁴

As the strike dragged into autumn, the
Roberts
sailors exhausted the navy's voluminous course book; they turned to various light construction projects around the base, repairing barracks and repainting buildings. Winter was creeping toward the Maine coast when the BIW employees' patience, and their strike fund, finally dwindled and disappeared. Union members approved a new contract on 7 October, and work on the
Roberts
resumed the following day.
⁵

Not long afterward, FFG 58's sailors broke camp in Norfolk and headed north, leaving a dazzled set of instructors in their wake.
“Samuel B. Roberts
was without a doubt the most impressive of the many FFG 7
class precommissioning detachments to conduct training here at Fleet Training Center, Norfolk,” the center's commander wrote. He ticked off the crew's accomplishments:
Roberts
sailors completed eighty-two different courses, for a sky-high total of three thousand classroom days. No disciplinary infractions. No drug busts. Forty-five promotions and fourteen personal awards had been granted. The local Jaycees even forwarded a note of appreciation for the
Roberts
's community service efforts. “It is obvious,” the training commander wrote, “that their ship will quickly be established as a ‘front runner' in the fleet, one that does it right, on time, every time.”
⁶

BLIZZARDS SOON ENFOLDED
coastal Maine, producing a season so cold and snowy that even the local lobstermen took notice. In Bath, the
Roberts
sailors spent long dark days on the ship, watching and learning. Gunner Reinert made sure his sailors were in attendance whenever one of the frigate's weapons went into place. When nothing much interesting was going on, the sailors crawled all over their ship, going hand over hand along pipes and cable runs, committing the systems to memory.

Like Reinert and Rinn, Lt. Gordan Van Hook was intent on training his junior sailors. The ship's chief engineer was responsible for the ship's propulsion system, electrical plant, pumps, filters, distillers, air conditioners, and myriad other gear. It was one of the navy's most demanding posts, and like any good officer, Van Hook knew he was only as good at his job as his sailors were at theirs.

So the chief engineer played Sorensen's kick-a-hole game with them and sent them on scavenger hunts around the ship. They took field trips to a half-built
Perry
frigate a few hundred yards away. “We'd take them over to the
Kauffman
[FFG 69] to let them see a bare-bones, not-in-the-water ship, walk around the spaces, see what was above you, below you.”
⁷

But the lieutenant knew enough to let his senior enlisted personnel do most of the teaching. “Van Hook was kind of hands off,” said Robert Bent, a chief electrician's mate. “He let [Chief Dave] Walker and experienced guys handle it. A lot of engineers would have had us painting the barracks; he wanted us down learning the stuff. He was no-nonsense for that kind of thing.”
⁸

Over the months, Van Hook developed a strong working relationship with two right-hand men: Chief Alex Perez, who knew the electrical systems of turbines like the back of his meaty hand, and Chief Walker, a mechanical specialist and a master problem-solver. The two chiefs paired up well. Perez was a firm but fair leader with a knack for paperwork and daily management, while Walker was a roguish sort who wore his hair long and affected aircrew-style flight suits for himself and his engineers. Van Hook considered Walker something of an administrative disaster, but when things went violently wrong, he was the guy you wanted around.

The chief engineer himself was rather young for his job; the Newport, Rhode Island, native had just five years' commissioned service as an officer. But more than a bit of saltwater flowed in his veins. One grandfather had graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1909, the other one in 1924, and a great-uncle in 1926. Gordon's own father, from the class of '51, had commanded several ships and retired as a captain after twenty-seven years in uniform. The family's list of alumni went into double digits once you started counting cousins.

Yet Van Hook's entry into naval service was far from preordained. Under the sway of a “hippie older sister,” he said, he matriculated at Texas A&M, where he earned a degree in wildlife and fisheries management. It was only when he began musing about joining the coast guard that his father put in a gentle word for the navy's Officer Candidate School. Perhaps obeying some buried genetic compulsion, Van Hook gave it a try—and loved the navy immediately. The junior officer had proven his mechanical ability on his first sea tour when he mastered the steam-puffing monstrosity that was the propulsion plant of an
Adams
-class destroyer. Sterling performance reviews propelled him to a prestigious two-year stint as an admiral's aide in San Diego and then a posting to the precommissioning
Roberts
.

Compared to the old destroyer, his
Perry
-class ship was a lot more pleasant to operate, if not exactly simpler. He had gas turbines tucked into soundproof boxes, not steam boilers roaring away in hellish engine rooms. Getting under way meant a ten-minute checklist, not a four-hour wait for warming pipes. And much of the plant could be operated by remote control, from the engineering nerve center called Central Control Station.

The BIW strike gave Van Hook five extra months to prepare for the ship's commissioning, now rescheduled for April 1986, and the chief engineer was nothing but happy about it. “It got us off to a great start, made the crew much closer, more together, much better trained,” he said.
⁹

The time in Bath wasn't all work. The chiefs' Fun Bunch established a comfortable end-of-day routine at the Muddy Rudder restaurant down the road in Yarmouth.
¹⁰
The sailors formed recreational sports teams that took on squads from other ships and from the P-3 Orion squadrons at nearby Brunswick Naval Air Station. The basketball and volleyball squads notched notable successes.

Rick Raymond signed up for the hockey squad. An operations specialist (OS) second class, he was part of Palmer's combat systems team. But Raymond wasn't a typical “twidget”—navy slang for sailors who worked with computers. Born in Brooklyn, raised in New Jersey, he had been a sheet metalworker until overfamiliarity with the unemployment line propelled him to the local recruiter's office. He asked to be a hull technician, which would have put his metalworking skills to use, but the navy made him an OS instead. Nevertheless, when Raymond arrived aboard the
Roberts
for his second sea tour, he fell in with the engineers and was eventually assigned to a fire party in Repair Locker 3—an unusual general quarters post for an OS. “Didn't bother me,” he said. “That was my personality: ‘Doesn't mind getting greasy and dirty.'”

Raymond's hockey team competed, or tried to, on the ice rink at nearby Bowdoin College. “We made the Bad News Bears look like the New York Yankees,” he said. “There were guys on the team who had to hold on to the boards to skate up and down the ice. We would get beat so bad they would turn the scoreboard off. But the camaraderie we had as a team was special, and we always had the largest crowd of fans cheering for us.”
¹¹

A WARSHIP IS
never so fussed over as during the rituals that place it in commissioned service. On 12 April the sky above the shipyard was thick with gray clouds, just a few shades lighter than the ship's spotless paint job. A damp wind stirred signal flags, strung in long catenaries from stem to mast to stern. Tricolor stripes of bunting iced the deckhouse. A pale canvas amidships protected a wooden dais from the intermittent drizzle.
The cold air held the smells of wet pavement and industrial grit and the far-off tang of the sea.

The
Roberts
had made its maiden voyages in January and February, excursions of a few days' duration meant to prove its worthiness as a navy warship. The ship had done far more than meet the standard; crusty old Vice Adm. John D. Bulkeley, still the navy's chief inspector, declared the frigate “excellent” in most areas and one of the cleanest ships he'd ever seen.
¹²
On 1 April the local SupShip deputy had signed an ordinary-looking government form, and
Roberts
became the property of the United States government.
¹³
But more than the sales transaction, more even than a first taste of saltwater, the commissioning rites marked the start of a ship's active life.

The crew of the
Roberts
, 182 sailors strong, stood in ranks on the pier. Coats had been banned so that the crew members might present a sharper appearance, and the junior sailors shivered in their dark blue jumpers and white Dixie-cup hats.
¹⁴
The officers wore dress blues and the accoutrements of rank: gloves, medals, and swords. “Commissioning was a lot of spit-and-polish stuff. For the most part very few of us appreciated the preparation,” recalled Mike Roberts, a signalman from Rochester, New York. “The actual ceremony was cool, in retrospect. Most of us didn't realize at the time how rare it was.”
¹⁵

A conversational hum rose from the crowd, punctuated by the scrape of folding chairs on concrete and service standards from the navy band. The gathering audience was mostly Bath Iron Works employees and local dignitaries, but plenty more were Rinn's personal guests. The gregarious commanding officer had invited scores of people to share one of the big days of his life.
¹⁶
Among them were nearly three dozen survivors of the first
Samuel B. Roberts
. Rinn had tracked them down with the help of the DE 413 shipmates' association. They wore ball caps emblazoned with the hull numbers of all three
Roberts
ships, and they had placed a sign by the ship: “Congratulations Bath Iron Works From The Survivors Of The ‘Sammy B.'”
¹⁷
Rinn and his sailors had unveiled a sign of their own: a heavy bronze plaque listing the crew members of DE 413. They had spent months hunting down the muster list from the day the destroyer escort went down. The plaque would be mounted near the quarterdeck and would serve as a reminder of strength in the ship's trials to come.
¹⁸

At half past eleven, the band stilled their instruments, and a chaplain offered a blessing. Capt. Paul Aquilino, the commodore of the
Roberts
's squadron, stepped to the podium and read the order placing the ship in commission.
¹⁹
In so doing, the commander of the Newport-based Surface Group Four accepted the task of supervising the new ship as it prepared for deployment nearly two years hence. But Aquilino's new burden paled next to the one that had just settled onto Paul Rinn. Even in the modern age of radio and data networks, there was no job that carried as much autonomy and responsibility as a warship captain at sea.

Rinn stepped to the podium and faced his crew. The sailors came to attention, awaiting the traditional first order of a commissioned ship, and their captain gave it: “Man our ship and bring her to life!”

At most commissionings these words triggered a pell-mell sprint for the gangways. The
Roberts
sailors remained stock-still. An aging gentleman in a dark suit rose from his seat. He was Lloyd A. Gurnett, the damage control officer of DE 413, and the last man to leave his mortally wounded ship at Leyte Gulf. Gurnett climbed the gangway, strode to the coaming, and saluted the officer of the deck. Then he made his way back down the ramp. The crowd cheered and the crew broke for the brows, adding their own hollering to the joyful noise. The ship itself came mechanically alive; gun and missile launcher dipped and swung; radar antennae rotated—“a little dance,” said Glenn Palmer, who had choreographed it with his sailors. Rinn ordered the first watch to be set, and the
Roberts
became a functioning warship.

At the podium, 2nd Fleet commander Vice Adm. Henry C. Mustin rose to speak. Mustin was the son of an admiral, grandson of the first pilot to fly from a ship's catapult, and, like Rinn, a decorated veteran of the Southeast Asian river campaigns. The admiral invoked the valor of Coxswain Roberts. “In the navy's hall of heroes, no name shines more brightly than that one,” said Mustin. The admiral saluted the survivors of DE 413. “They steamed those little ships into the valley of death,” he told the crowd. “I feel pretty humble about talking about it in their presence.” It would not be the last time Mustin would praise a ship named
Samuel B. Roberts
.