The Fall Field Day '03 crew gathers at the fantail 20mms for a photo on Saturday morning.
Fall Field Day '03: The Fall Field Day turned out to be another large one this year with twenty-one people attending from as far away as California. With such a large work force on hand, we managed to get quite a few projects completed before Sunday rolled around.
Mike and Robin McGee teamed up with John Ellsworth (DD591) to fix a leak in the portals of the Mk-37 gun director. They removed all of the glass panes and worn gaskets and found one of the panes was cracked. A quick trip to Bengal Glass up the street secured a new pane, but a trip across town was needed to get new gasket material. Once completed, Mike cut the new gaskets, while John ground the edges of the new pane down (it was just a hair too large). Everything was reassembled, but unfortunately, as the bolts securing the final pane were tightened down, another glass cracked. As Mike good-naturedly put it, “I know what I’ll be doing at the next field day.”
With things wrapping up on the director, Robin retreated to her old stomping grounds in the aft fireroom where she spent the final day of the weekend painting some of the boiler facings that she had brought to bare metal the last time she was here. Richard Ammon (DD661) was down the hole as well with stencils in hand, labeling the various controls and steam lines. Noah Mathias (DD541) kept busy painting hand rails. Over in the aft engineroom, Max Igleheart (BB40) was busy painting the reduction gear covers. Roger McCracken (DD541) was mirroring Noah’s work next door by painting the hand rails in the engineroom.
The two Carls—Carl Burris (DD677) and Carl Dillworth (DD546)—remounted equipment to the bulkheads in Mount 54 for most of the weekend. Wives Pam Burris and Pat Dillworth cleaned and wiped down the Fletcher Museum and the Wardroom respectively. They also kept the two Carls from too much shenanigans, a full-time job in itself.
Mac Mackensen (CVL27) joined up with George Gordin (DD661) to install a couple of new light sockets in Mount 52 as well as tackle other electrical gremlins aboard ship. Richard Truman (DD661) also took care of repairs to lighting systems in Radio Central. He and George teamed up to take down one of the sinks in the aft head and replace a faucet. Richard then replaced the bulbs in our cargo lamps before cleaning up our Small Arms Locker, wiping down all of the 1903 Springfield rifles.
Belowdecks, Ed Eckert (DD698) and Tom Andreasen (DD679) were hard at work on stripping the paint off of the stainless steel on the Mk-1A fire control computer in IC-Plot. Just up the corridor from them, Mack Bradley (DD661) was cleaning up CPO quarters before doing the same at his old duty station in CIC. He then interviewed with a student from Southern University about how the ship’s radar systems worked. Noah and Roger also lifted a couple of footlockers off the decks and mounted them on brackets that we had fabricated.
Our deck force this time consisted of Don Wallis (1st Inf. Div., USMC), Dan Outman, and sons Keven (age 10) and Kenny (age 9). These guys were our Special Ops squad when it came to killing wasps that had invaded and taken over the twin and quad 40mms. Once the guns were secured, a bit of paintwork was done before the crew moved on to paint the deck on the foc’s’le. Elsewhere topside, Ed and Tom took a breather and repaired a bit of our snaking that someone had butchered with a pocketknife.
Benjamin and Jo Ann Fernandez (DDG16 and FF1074) handled the galley with their accustomed expertise. Son Ben (aka “Little Ben”) handled a camera for us on Saturday, filming Mack Bradley, Richard Ammon, and Max Igleheart as they explained the operations of CIC and the firerooms respectively. He also got artistic with a dremmil tool and a pumpkin, carving an intricate USS KIDD Fall Field Day jack-o-lantern.