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                                             MEMORIES CHAPTER 2

The USS YUMA ATF 94 is an Auxiliary Tug Fleet; the Moore Shipyard in Portland Oregon built it. The first trip was a true nightmare; the only crew members that had been to sea before were two of the officers, three-deck force and the sonar men. (The Sonar men had just competed training off the coast at San Diego)
The first trip was from Portland to San Francisco; there we received ammunition and Radar.  The Radar was installed at the Oakland ship yard, I had the mail duty and made the trip over to S F Fleet Post office each day. I road a Buss, Streetcar, Train and walked a lot. After a week or more the communications officer found out that the shipyard had a courier that made the trip each day and I could ride with them, what was a real chore became a pleasure. I would go over in the morning spend a couple of hours in San Francisco then catch the afternoon trip back to the ship. If I had known that I would be responsible for the Radar I would have spent more time with the installation Engineer. The Captain thought that a Radar man would be assigned to the Ship, but there were none available so I got the job. This was enjoyable, as boredom was a plague; to stand the same watch over and over at peak efficiency was almost impossible, because of boredom. Having so many different responsibilities, made time go faster and was not so boring .I was the Sonar maintenance man sonar searcher, Radar maintenance man and backup radar man, when in port I was the mail man, still don’t know how that happened!  The communications officer said I got the job because I was the senior member of his group and besides I got the most mail. The Rockford News published all of the local service men’s addresses and asked people to write us letters, it was great, got some good letters.
During the war Yuma was assigned to emergency rescue.
In this assignment we traveled with the invasion forces and were in seventeen landings on scattered islands of the south pacific.  Any ship that was damaged to the point of needing aid called on us. We rescued every thing from a landing vehicle to a personnel ship. We assisted several damaged fighting vessels that were on fire or needed extra pumps to stay afloat. The very dangerous operations were pulling landing ships off the beach when they got stuck. The worst time was at Iwo Jima we got stuck trying to get a landing ship off the beach after it broached, now we had to get help, we used a landing craft tank to carry the anchor out to sea and we pulled are selves off the beach.   There were so many incidents in the thirty-six months that I was aboard this ship it would make a book alone. When the war was over I came back from Japan on a magic carpet carrier, cant remember the name. The one thing I do remember is the new records they were playing; Sentimental Journey, When Its Over Over there, Wont Have To Dream Anymore, etc. I have not included some of the interesting things that happened on the Yuma, as they are painful to recall, maybe on another day.
       I got home on new years eve and went to a dance at the Foust Hotel, what a celebration. I danced with every one from Grandma to teenyboppers, did not set down all night, saved the first and last dance for my date.
        The Navy had given me a thirty-day leave then I was to report to Great Lakes for discharge. When I got to the discharge center the chief said sign this and your out! There was a catch he had signed me up for the Reserves. When the Korean War broke out back in I went. During this hitch I was assigned to the anti-submarine warfare experimental division at Key West Florida.  We were using helicopters to search for subs. This was very interesting work, also dangerous.! However it was successful as today they use variations of what was developed back then. During the development one of the objectives was to find out the weather extremes that we could operate in such as how windy, did heat effect the operation, what was the roughest seas we could work in etc. Finding these things out is called red lining.  We traveled to New Jersey, New York and some classified places to find cold water. The results were classified then; they may be yet so will pass on the reports. I must say flying in an open helicopter in cold weather is for Eskimos and I am not one.
One of the great thrills of this project was working with the inventor of the helicopter Sonar Dr JJ Coop. The good Dr. would fly with us to see how difficult it was to concentrate on sub sounds against communications and ambient noise .He never was able to separate the noise from intelligent information. The navy did get us some very good helmets that were sound proof, to damp out the ambient noise. During these tests we crashed two helicopters and later I was in a blimp that went down towing the towed type Sonar. Chief Barter and I went down near light house key and Tex Stewart and I went down in the swamp near Boca Chica Airfield.