GMGSA Robert J. Summerhill

All of us Pre-Comm types, the Blue and the Gold crews were eager to board the Hewes and test her out. I mean, just think, most of the older crew members had never seen such a DE as the Knox Class. High pressure steam, off set screw, and what the hell was a Mack? We in the gun gang had our hands full with the ” new ” Mk.42 Mod.9 DPRFGM with only two people in the gun, one at the control panel, and one in the magazine yelling at the BM’s and the cooks to load the two loader drums. The new age of Naval gunnery was upon us. One problem though, it didn’t go bang! The damn thing had been designed by Northern Ordnance, a division of all things, FMC Corp., you know, bowling allies, Harleyes, and food stuffs, The Navy had also allowed the gun to be screwed with by the Sandcrabs at Crain,IN, and thrown on to the DE’s as the main gun of the ship. By the time we got our hands on it, FMC had slowed the firing rate down from 80 rounds a minute to 40. I’m not kidding eater. 80 rounds a minute! If you have ever been in the gun doing 40 RPM, you can see how outrageous 80 RPM was! Here is an overview of what it takes to fire ONE round. First you have to cut a wire on the powder tank and remove the powder case, a wrench may have to be used. The powder case is then passed through a passing port ( yea, like we used those a lot ) and the powder loader would grab it and place the base of the powder case into through the latching doors of the lower loader drum, and punch the top cork piece the rest of the way into the drum. The drum would auto index to the next empty slot. Now, the poor slob who had to do the projectile, had to reach over head, pull down with one hand a round of what ever we were shooting, catch it ( 72 lbs ) with the other hand, and guide it to the deck, base first, Ever heard one that got away?. Then he or another Magazine hand would cut off the rotating band protective cover, toss it away, then remove the protective steel nose cap, covering the fuse,a wrench may be needed. Now if we are shore bombarding, the fuse may have to be turned to SQ ( super quick ) so the FT’s and the Old Man can see the explosion from 10,000 yards away. Well, back to the magazine. The poor slob now has to heave up the projectile to the passing port ( not!) and it in turn is placed onto a shelf on the top loader drum, and using both fist shoves the shell with vigor into the slot, trying not to cut his fingers off. We now have one complete “round” loaded into the gun system. The Lower Hoist now brings up the round to the Carriage Room. It’s purpose is to mate to the Upper Hoist that is turning with the gun up on the Main deck The Carriage can and did turn more than 360° when needed. The round is now hydraulically placed into the Upper Hoist, it then raises the round to the Cradle, a massive,complex arm that mates with the gun at any elevation. The round is now kicked into the Transfer Tray which flies down, opens up and allows the Rammer to seat the round in the chamber,trip the breech block, and swing up out of the way, ready for the next round. The breech block fully closes, and God willing and the FT’s are ready the gun is now ready to fire. O yea, the loading system has a Port AND Starboard everything I just listed except gun barrel and breech. So here we are. Two rounds coming up, at over 100 MPH, each waiting their turn to load the breach, with the guns control system SLOWED down to 40 RPM, and a CO wanting to hear his gun go bang. It didn’t work. We ( GMGC Morris, GMG1 Erwin, GMG2 Goeaters, GMG3 Bennish, and me GMGSA Summerhill ) worked,and worked, and worked on the damn gun for hours, days, and weeks at a time, it didn’t work. The Old Man was just about to give up on us when a bet was made by GMGC Morris to the Skipper that we in fact COULD fire 20 rounds Rapid Continues Fire without breaking down. The bet was on!

To be continued…