Navy Story #3
Maneuvering in the Wind
In November and December of 1974, we took a research submarine, NR-1, to the Caribbean area. What a horrible time of the year to be in the Caribbean, huh? Just kidding. It was wonderful.
Here's a picture of the submarine: It's a bit hard to see it through all the cables on one of our cranes, but the sub is in the center of the picture, with its stern (back end)
toward you and its conning tower (red or orange) toward the bow (front end) of the sub, away from you. It's not a tiny sub, but it is small enough to fit into our well deck, and to sit in some special cradles that were
installed.
The above picture was taken while we were in the Caribbean, after they had done some research and were preparing to come back into the Pensacola. The task of getting the NR-1 into our
well deck was vastly easier in the Caribbean than the first time we did it, because of a suggestion that I (ahem) made to my ship's Captain the first time we brought the submarine aboard.
We first brought NR-1 into our well deck on a cold, windy day in the river/bay at Groton, CT. The safest way to go about this loading was for both us and the sub to be underway, rather
slowly, but underway nonetheless. That gave us some control over the relative orientation of the ship and the sub, since only a moving ship or sub can be steered! Anyway, as we started the effort, the wind was coming from
about 30 degrees "off our port bow", meaning it was from the front, but not directly ahead. It was about 30 degrees off of directly ahead, to the left. We were heading down the center of the bay/river, and the
wind wasn't directly heading down the river, basically. Each time we slowed enough for the sub to come into our ship, the wind blew us off course and we would have to radio to the sub to back off. The wind affected us
a lot because of the high profile toward the bow (front) of Pensacola. Here's a picture that shows our profile:
The bridge, btw, where we were conning (steering) the ship from, is way up toward the front, about half-way between the bow (the very front) and the tallest radar mast.
This failed effort at loading NR-1 happened probably 2 or 3 times, maybe more, and we were about to give up and tell NR-1 that we would have to wait for a less windy day to try again.
But then I suggested to the Captain that we head directly into the wind. The wind could slow us down, and that wouldn't matter, as long as we didn't drift off course. So the Captain had the navigator check the bay
to make sure we had room to change course, and we did, so we changed course to head directly into the wind. On the very first try with us heading directly into the wind, NR-1 made it aboard. The Captain congratulated me
on a great suggestion. We did that kind of maneurver many more times in the Caribbean, and it worked every time.