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STORIES Kenneth Anderson
| Sandra S. Simpson My father, Millard Conner, related this story to me. It was 1955, and we were just coming into New York on the St. James River from Korea on the USS IOWA BB61 when the ship hit a sand bar clogging the pumps. The ship engines died and we lost all power, we were "dead in the water." The emergency generators would not crank because there was no air in the starter tanks. I grabbed a battle lantern and a bunch of wrenches, and I started going through the ship. I was checking air tanks looking for air to crank the dead diesel engines. When I found an air tank that had sufficient air to crank the engines, I opened and closed off valves transferring air to the engine room to crank the emergency generators. This was a concept unknown to the engineers on the ship at the time. The Chief Engineer, Chief J. B. Hargis, asked my dad how he knew to do this? My dad told him that when he came aboard the USS IOWA BB61 in 1951, he made it a point to learn all he could about the mechanics of that ship, because his life and the lives of his buddies might one day depend on it and that day he was exactly right. Thanks for your efforts to see that the people who have given of their time and their lives are given a little recognition. |