TONKIN GULF YACHT CLUB

[JNG]

Am the only member of this club.
USS Kittyhawk CV-63?
72 to 75.
Tail end of this insanity.

Joe

[jnyork]

Welcome Home, Joe

[GunnyMack]

If I read your post, do I infer you are the LAST surviving crew member? My thanks to you and your crew mates for your service and my condolences as well.

[Ray]

Deleted.

[earlmck]

Well I spent a little time in the same Yacht club: '66 to '68 -- USS Bon Homme Richard CVA 31. I'm pretty sure there are lots of survivors; how many are levergunners is the question I suspect Joe is asking.

[TraderVic]

I was over there too ;

USS John R Craig DD 885
USS Hoel DDG-13

[rgates]

USS Wainwright DLG-28

[Griff]

USS Somers, DDG-34, '72 & '73

[TraderVic]

Am the only member of this club.
USS Kittyhawk CV-63?
72 to 75.
Tail end of this insanity.

Joe

My ship was on the gun line with the Kitty Hawk, several other carriers as well. The Kitty Hawk was in Hong Kong (anchored way out back) same time I was there (one of the two times).

[Jay Bird]

Canoe, Brandywine Creek, '66-'68 B.S.A.

Birdman

[new pig hunter]

Summer 1973, Yankee Station, on the Constellation (CV-64), 6 weeks total from mid-June to late July.

[Scott Tschirhart]

God bless you all for your service.

[jeepnik]

I have a cousin who’s a member. While he was listening to the sounds in the water another was on his second trip with the Marines. That was always good for some good natured ribbing.

But I would remind them both that I got to visit exotic places but was usually back home by dark.

Get the rest of us together and the rest of the family would vacate the area.

Only two left now. Sure do miss that old *** in the grass Marine.

[Griff]

Am the only member of this club.
USS Kittyhawk CV-63?
72 to 75.
Tail end of this insanity.
Joe

At the end of '73, I had my original separation orders cancelled... and was then offered my choice of 3, one of which was a transfer to the Kitty Hawk as a newly frocked E-6. I'd actually been aboard the KH in '72 after being injured during an UnReps. I spent about 18 hours getting my back x-rayed and being evaluated. I was sick the entire time! But, I wasn't prejudiced... I threw up on brown as well as black shoes! Our chief corpsman had accompanied me over from the destroyer and finagled my escape back to a real Navy ship... not a floating aircraft hanger!

[Ray]

Deleted.

[roughcreek]

1965 USS CORAL SEA CVA-43
1966 USS INTREPID CVS-11
1967 USS CONSTELLATION CVA-64
1974 USS ENTERPRISE CVAN-65
1976 USS AMERICA CV-66

DALE AT1

[Ray]

Deleted.

[M. M. Wright]

Gentlemen I salute you!

[earlmck]

At the time I left the grey floaty thing in the Tonkin Gulf to do my shore duty over on the beach at Danang I was ET-2 (electronics technician 2nd class (E5)). Fixed radars.

[Ray]

Deleted.

[MS 9x56]

See you don't need to lonesome. A big thank you to all you gentleman who served an ungrateful ( at the time) nation.

[jeepnik]

Had to look-up that AT.....We had some "A"s on-board with the SH-2 wing but I never had any interaction even though I was port-side a.f.f.f nozzleman on the crash team.....

Ray, are you getting all of the junk emails from lawyers wanting to sue 3M because now the foam causes cancer?

[gak]

Pre-dates its eventual membership in the Tonkin Gulf Club but, when we (my Air Force-officer father) were stationed in southern Japan in 61-64, he finagled with the Admiral a personal Commander-guided tour for our family of the carrier USS Kearsarge (CVS-33) in Sasebo--a two hour drive from our base. Thrill of a lifetime for this nine-year-old. As a major bonus, on deck sitting on a basic angle iron rack was the Gordon Cooper Mercury Faith 7 spacecraft the Kearsarge had just plucked from the Pacific near Midway a couple weeks earlier (in May 1963). Actually got to run our hands over that including the scorched heat shield (something I'm sure they would frown upon now at the Smithsonian!)... and majorly upped my cred at 'show and tell' day at school! Scarcely a year later, the Kearsarge, which had a year or two earlier done Southeast Asia duty monitoring the volatile Laotian and other early Vietnam developments, went on to (its sailors) become a member of the Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club.
.

[Larkbill]

Ha! AT3, but the closest I got was Albany, Ga. Though some of my UHF radios made the trip in speedy RA5C Vigilantes. Unarmed and Unafraid! Our pilots had big brass ones to overfly strike areas for BDA reports after the hornet's nest had been whacked.

Welcome home all who went.

[TraderVic]

Pre-dates its eventual membership in the Tonkin Gulf Club but, when we (my Air Force-officer father) were stationed in southern Japan in 61-64, he finagled with the Admiral a personal Commander-guided tour for our family of the carrier USS Kearsarge (CVS-33) in Sasebo--a two hour drive from our base. Thrill of a lifetime for this nine-year-old. As a major bonus, on deck sitting on a basic angle iron rack was the Gordon Cooper Mercury Faith 7 spacecraft the Kearsarge had just plucked from the Pacific near Midway a couple weeks earlier (in May 1963). Actually got to run our hands over that including the scorched heat shield (something I'm sure they would frown upon now at the Smithsonian!)... and majorly upped my cred at 'show and tell' day at school! Scarcely a year later, the Kearsarge, which had a year or two earlier done Southeast Asia duty monitoring the volatile Laotian and other early Vietnam developments, went on to (its sailors) become a member of the Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club.
.

Sasabo, haven't heard that name in a long time. My destroyer left "the gun line" to spend six weeks in dry dock for repairs in Sasebo. During that time the ship's Rec Officer set up a tour to Nagasaki, which I did go on, about a two hour drive from Sasebo.
Nagasaki Area is a rough landscape (mountainous) and very beautiful. I stood at ground zero, which is now a memorial park.

[Griff]

Pre-dates its eventual membership in the Tonkin Gulf Club but, when we (my Air Force-officer father) were stationed in southern Japan in 61-64, he finagled with the Admiral a personal Commander-guided tour for our family of the carrier USS Kearsarge (CVS-33) in Sasebo--a two hour drive from our base. Thrill of a lifetime for this nine-year-old. As a major bonus, on deck sitting on a basic angle iron rack was the Gordon Cooper Mercury Faith 7 spacecraft the Kearsarge had just plucked from the Pacific near Midway a couple weeks earlier (in May 1963). Actually got to run our hands over that including the scorched heat shield (something I'm sure they would frown upon now at the Smithsonian!)... and majorly upped my cred at 'show and tell' day at school! Scarcely a year later, the Kearsarge, which had a year or two earlier done Southeast Asia duty monitoring the volatile Laotian and other early Vietnam developments, went on to (its sailors) become a member of the Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club.

Sasabo, haven't heard that name in a long time. My destroyer left "the gun line" to spend six weeks in dry dock for repairs in Sasebo. During that time the ship's Rec Officer set up a tour to Nagasaki, which I did go on, about a two hour drive from Sasebo.
Nagasaki Area is a rough landscape (mountainous) and very beautiful. I stood at ground zero, which is now a memorial park.

Our destroyer also went up to Sasebo for a refit during our WestPac. While several guys took the Nagasaki tour and a couple of guys went up to Tokyo, several of us took a tour to the west coast and an ancient castle. {dang-nas-en-fras-et stupid pictures are around here somewhere....} One of the stops we made was a restaurant where the customer does the cooking, grilling over a charcoal grill. Looked it up and it's called Yakiniku style dining. Both vegetables and meats... I don't recall any of us getting sick after eating our own cooking, but then... we were well self-inoculated with various forms of alcohol by then! The bus driving was pretty impressive, as a couple of those villages were so tight that two rickshaws would be hard pressed to pass each other!

[TraderVic]

The Japanese tour buses were constructed for Japanese size people, not larger Americans. Thankfully, there wasn't a full bus as most of us required two seats each.
BTW Griff, which destroyer were you on ?

[hfcable]

Well I spent a little time in the same Yacht club: '66 to '68 -- USS Bon Homme Richard CVA 31. I'm pretty sure there are lots of survivors; how many are levergunners is the question I suspect Joe is asking.

my first cousin, Charlie Clayton, was a 'fireman' on USS Bon Homme Richard, during the mid to late 60s. he told me about riding out a typhoon, and wondering if the ship would make it.

[earlmck]

Yes I remember that typhoon, cable. Would have been on our '67-'68 deployment. They locked the ship down with nobody allowed out on any exposed deck. My primary job was taking care of one of the big radars sitting on top of the "island", so from my work space I got a wonderful birds-eye view from the top of the island of the ship plowing through those huge waves. Some of those waves would break clear up onto the flight deck with water boiling nearly back to the island (even on an old WWII era carrier that is a long, long way and really impressed this old desert rat). I never worried about the Bon Homme surviving the typhoon but I'll bet our accompanying tin cans had some tense sailers.

Tell Charlie that Earl says "hey -- it's all good if we survived it!"

[Griff]

The Japanese tour buses were constructed for Japanese size people, not larger Americans. Thankfully, there wasn't a full bus as most of us required two seats each.
BTW Griff, which destroyer were you on ?

Yep, sitting sideways was required. I think, on our tour there was only 8 or 9 of us. The USS Somers, DDG-34.
Aka:

PICT0032.JPG

[TraderVic]

The Japanese tour buses were constructed for Japanese size people, not larger Americans. Thankfully, there wasn't a full bus as most of us required two seats each.
BTW Griff, which destroyer were you on ?

Yep, sitting sideways was required. I think, on our tour there was only 8 or 9 of us. The USS Somers, DDG-34.
Aka:
PICT0032.JPG

First tour : USS John R Craig DD-885
Second tour : USS Hoel DDG-13

[earlmck]

Biggest trouble of being stationed on a carrier was that when you hit the beach you had a couple thousand other fellows all with exactly the same ideas. My trip to Nagasaki from Sasebo would have been a pretty full-up bus; I have no recollection of any sitting problems but I was a lot more flexible back in those days. My memory banks flash up a picture of the cute young lady tour guide who spoke a most entrancing version of English. I remember thinking I'd always pronounced "Nagasaki" wrong -- the way it came out of our lady tour guide's mouth it sounded more like "Nagasak--City".