BT2 William Kirchmayer

Ok, who remembers the time the Joey boat and the USS Radford were in the Black sea together? Anybody? Well, it was like this…………

It was during the Med cruise of 1980 and for one reason or another the pride of the fleet, USS Joseph Hewes FF 1078 was sent to the wonderfully modern metropolis of Istanbul. Now, seeing it was 1980 and all, smoking dope was still a major concern to the powers that be (or should I say were…hmmm). Soooo… before any member of the Joeys crew was allowed to go on liberty in Turkey, we all had to watch the movie titled “Midnight Express” about a young misguided American college student who just had to attempt to smuggle some hashish out of Turkey, I’m sure that you’ve heard or seen this film so I’ll leave critical review to the critics. We also had to sign a paper acknowledging that we FULLY were aware of the possible consequences of messing with drugs while in Turkey. As I remember only one member of the crew got in trouble with drugs while moored off of Istanbul, and this clown didn’t even have to leave the ship to get busted. Seems that this fellow was a mess-cook and was assigned to take the trash to the garbage barge that visited the ship every day. The trash was off loaded through the doors on the stern for the SQS-18 towed array sonar (boy I hope I got the right number and name for the bubble head gear). Seems that the young mess cook had struck a deal with the guys on the garbage barge and was taking delivery of the hashish all the while being observed by the OOD! Anyhow, Turkey was probably most of that crews first visit to an Islamic country so we didn’t know quite what to expect, but we all survived in spite of ourselves. The Turkish Navy refueled the ship from a YO that actually moved under its own power (something we never seen in port in Charleston). The Turkish sailors were asking about skin books
so BTCM Webber had me go to my locker and bring some up ( I even gave away the 25th anniv. issue of Playboy I had, got a Turkish CPO cap for it). Well back to what this story’s about….So the ship left Istanbul and into the Black sea we went along with USS Radford.

Man was it ever weird, we had just cleared the channel when out of the blue, we had Russian ships on both sides of us and as well as in front and in back of us, and man were they armed with all sorts of guns and missiles. Every so often we’d get buzzed by a Soviet jet, and these were not the usual Bear deltas or foxtrots but I believe they were Il 121s,
and they flew low, so low you could see all the ordnance hanging off the wings with a nice bright red star so there was no doubt who they were. Now, just being in the Black sea was a bit dangerous, considering the Russians figured it to be theirs in spite of the fact its international waters. The ship was tooling around fairly slow along with the Radford, so the deck force got to catch up on their painting seeing as the water was rather calm. There was a board rigged off the port side aft on the fantail and a young man named SA Negron was given the job of working over the side. All of a sudden the word comes over the 1MC ” Man overboard port side, motor whaleboat crew to the motor whale boat”. Well, the old Joey backs right down in smart Navy fashion and BM2 Smith got the whaleboat launched and going, when what do you suppose happens next? The damn Russians are beating a path to where our man SA Negron was bobbing about like a cork in a bowl of borscht. Luckily Smitty beat the Communist pirates to where young Negron was and
rescued his dumb ass from a short future in some Soviet Gulag. When they got him (Negron) back aboard it was discovered that the little puke had 3 waterlogged twenty dollar bills in his dungaree shirt pocket. It also seems that just as the word for man overboard was being passed, that every life ring and smoke float from amidships aft had been tossed after young Mr. Negron. Turns out the fool jumped over the side for $60. Needless to sa