Quote:
Originally Posted by Llarry
Alameda, right? A friend of my father's was CO of the Coral Sea out of Alameda in 1963 or so and they ran aground a half mile from the pier just like your ship. The CO lost his job and his career was ruined. I think it happened a bunch of times at Alameda.
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Yes, it was Alameda. Sounds like the same spot. Our Capt was up for Admiral and I remember talk that was in jeopardy. I looked him up and not only didn't it hurt him, he made 4 star Admiral and was Commander of the Pacific Fleet.
I was on Enterprise from 82-86. Unfortunately we weren't done running into the earth. In the 85 final workup to another WESPAC we were off the coast of S. Cal. We smashed into the rocks around the well documented Bishop Rock area. Tore a huge hole in the hull and damaged props. Once we figured out we weren't under attack or something hadn't blown up internally everybody was convinced we ran over one of our subs. We took on so much water you could feel her list. We crawled around for a couple of days as experts were flown out to access the damage. I still remember the Capt over the 1MC explaining that Enterprise was a war vessel and what we had was acceptable battle damage. Our training would continue as plan. We had to take on more water on the opposite side to rebalance. We added something like 10ft more to our draft. Upon return to Alameda the ship was supposed to transit across the bay during high tide to Hunters Point for repair. The tides didn't work out as planned and there she was sitting in the middle of the bay in the morning. Finally made it to Hunters Point on the next high tide.