Mark Bradley's USS Leader (MSO 490) during Viet Nam memories.
 |
RMSA Mark Bradley Age 18
 |
| A picture of the lady out bound from Pearl Harbor with Waikiki in the back ground, 1965. We were headed to Guam where we would go into dry dock for voyage repairs prior to deployment to the Philippines and patrol off Vietnam. Her hull was in bad need of scraping. We had not been able to make flank speed since the States. |
 |
|
This is on Market
Time patrol, Vietnam 1965
|
 |
| My father was a decorated WWII infantryman and sent me this sailors prayer while I was on patrol. I was an only child and he was nervous |
| MY
FIRST DAY ABOARD THE LEADER
I had joined the Navy in Los Angeles California and completed boot camp and NTC San Diego. And for all of you who went there it is all up for sale. All that land, buildings and all. Once I had completed boot camp, I was fortunate enough to pull a Class A Communications School to become a radioman. For some apparent reason the guy who scored my tests thought I would be good at copying code. To this day I would like to choke him. Listening to dots and dashes 18 hours a day causes mental illness. Upon completing school, I was stationed in Hawaii for two years, during which time I had received my first "crow" and was now a petty officer (operative word is petty). After completing my tour I was ordered to report aboard the USS Leader in Long Beach. I had been told what an MSO was but was not really buying into a wooden ship. Anyway, I remember after going home on leave for two weeks, I reported on board. It was early in the evening and I was walking down pier 9 in Long Beach to the ship with my sea bag over my shoulder and my orders and records in one hand. I got to the quarterdeck and handed my orders to the man on watch. He told me to report "below" and I would be shown where to bunk. "Below", I thought. "God, I hope that is down." You see, I had been on land all of my Navy time so far and now I was going to be a fleet sailor and had to learn these new terms. "Below" was down a very steep ladder that ended up right in the middle of the galley where the crew watched TV at night. So I found the passage way (see I was learning all these words very quickly) and balancing my very heavy sea bag (I was in my dress blues sporting my new stripe) I started down this steep ladder. Little did I know the entire crew was below watching TV at the time and as I tried to balance my sea bag and navigate the steep angle, all of a sudden I slipped. This caused me to go crashing all they way down the ladder and landing on my ass in the midst of the entire crew. It was an incredibly grand entrance for an incredibly unseasoned fleet sailor. I remember sitting there thinking (Oh God! Make me disappear). The crew looked over at me for a moment, smiled and went back to watching Batman. Although I made friends quickly, it was close to six months before I lost my nickname of "CRASH". A truly humbling experience for my first day aboard the Leader. But it was just the beginning of what was to be the greatest adventure of my life. Memories |
|
|
|
Tribute to
a Shipmate
03/30/03 by Mark Bradley RM3 USS Leader 1965-66
I have wanted to tell this story for more than 40 years and now that Mike Goss has found the Leader a home, I can. I have come to believe that if you served in the US Navy on anything larger than a sweep, you don’t know what it is like to be a fleet sailor. But that is just me.
I reported to the Leader in Long Beach in early 65 after a grueling tour at the Comm Station in Hawaii. It was rough duty and in those days you even got sea pay for it. When I received my orders to the Leader I had no idea what an MSO was. If you have never gotten underway in one of these ladies you have not lived.
Close your eyes and imagine a “ship” approximately 175 feet long, 35 feet at the beam, with a crew of some 75 enlisted men and 7 officers. Now imagine she takes about 12 to 14 feet of water to the keel, which means she rides like a life raft in a storm. Now imagine she is all wood and can only do 12 to 14 knots on a good day with a tail wind. On top of that imagine they are going to send you to Vietnam in this thing to participate in coastal patrol activities. Where was Hawaii now that I needed it?
With a crew that small you can't help but be close. And Bill Castle and I were shipmates. We worked in Ops, he as a sonar man and I was a radioman. He taught me how to use the sonar but those “Scope dopes” could never learn morse code and he gave up early on.
We worked together and went on liberty together and got into more fights and thrown out of more bars in Subic Bay than I can count. But Bill and I were close and I regret the day I lost contact with him so many years ago. If this note and Web page finds you Bill, I hope you have been well and happy.
Bill’s story is some 40 years old and the exact date has been lost in time, but the incident remains intact in my mind. Bill I hope I tell it right.
When I met Bill he was a Sonar man Third class and had been busted from First Class for an incident that I cannot recall. But never the less he lost his stripes and if I recall correctly, it had been several years since the captain’s mast.
We had been on Market Time patrol for many weeks, standing port and starboard watches of 8 on and 8 off. The evaporators had gone down and we were on water rationing and that meant salt-water showers, washing your clothes by dragging them behind the ship, and water hours on the drinking fountain, all in well over 100 degree heat. The radio shack was so hot that we had a “red devil” ducted from the escape hatch to the transmitters to keep the radios up. Your bunk never got dry and I slept in the 40mm gun tub at night on a pile of life jackets. All in all it was a little slice of hell.
The skipper knew the crew was tired but we were a long way from Subic and had more patrol time to do. So the captain found a seaplane tender in a cove with a white sandy beach. Two seaplanes were moored along side her as we pulled into the small bay.
The skipper made a deal with the tender and we began to use the lifeboat to pick up beer from the tender and put men on the beach to relax and drink. The bay was calm but we had seen several sharks and the jellyfish were as big as cars.
The day wore on and the skeleton crew stayed on board as the whaleboat came and went. As dusk began to set in, it was time to bring all hands back on board and get underway. All were aboard, the anchor came up and we began to maneuver out of the cove. Without warning ‘Man over board, Port side” was sounded. We began the classic figure 8 maneuver to return to where we thought the man would be. In the mean time Bill ran out of CIC to the signal bridge and saw the man in the water struggling to stay up. He was a “Red Striper”(fireman) who was drunk and had fallen off the fantail when we came about and was now in trouble. Without hesitation or thought for his own safety Bill slipped off his shoes and dove from the signal bridge to the water below. Now if you have never jumped off the signal bridge of an MSO during swim call out at sea, during the fall you have plenty of time to try and figure out just why in the hell you jumped.
Bill got to the man and swam him all the way to the tender where they were both taken on board. We stayed on station, close by, over night and picked up Bill the next day.
Almost a week later the skipper called the crew together to announce that because of Bill’s heroic action he was being reinstated to First Class and being paid back pay. I will never forget the look on Bill’s face when I went up and hugged him and said, “I have never met a real hero”. True story and if you were with us you will remember it. I recalled it the best I could.
Bill wherever you are I hope you know how proud of you we all were and I hope you finally found your way home.
Mark Bradley |
 |
|
This is the cove
where the man overboard incident occurred. You can see the planes sitting
in the bay
|
 |
|
USS Leader (MSO-490) We keep cruising without changing course and this massive whale gets closer and closer without moving. All of a sudden we realize it's not going to move and we hit it broadside. She comes up out of the water on the port side blowing all kinds of blood and we have a bright green color in our stern wake. We stop put a diver in the water and our sonar dome is torn off. The green color in our wake is the anti-freeze from the sonar dome. Luckily our transducer was up and did not get damaged. We ended up in Guam in dry dock for repairs. The funny part was the skipper was really upset because he thought no one would believe he hit a whale and think instead he went aground. To put a little humor in things, one night I cut out a stencil of a whale and painted it above our battle ribbons on the signal bridge. Next morning when the skipper took his walk, he saw it, and although he was laughing, he came right to me in radio central because I was always the guy in trouble. It got painted out before we got to port. True story....for those who were there, you will remember it. |
 |
| August 1965 Vietnam.
Mark Bradley at the helm. Unbearable heat. Radio shack over 110 degrees.
Having trouble keeping transmitters up and running. |
 |
|
Battle Stations
on the bow. Vietnam 1965. Notice that the 40MM is still in place.
|
|
Sleeping Under
the 40
I was recently informed, that about the time I left the Leader, the 40MM was removed from the forecastle. Although I understand the improved technology involved in this decision, what is an MSO without a 40MM? It's like the boomerang joke; "What do you call a boomerang that does not come back?" Answer - "A stick." A sweep without a 40 would accordingly be called driftwood. But that's just me. I had a love hate relationship with the 40. I was fortunate enough to be the "trigger man" numerous times and unfortunate enough to sleep directly beneath it. The first was enjoyable and the second was painful. My father had grown up in Nebraska, hunting pheasant and was an accomplished shooter. Add to that his time in the Army, as an infantryman with combat experience, with a Gerand M1 and you have someone who taught me to shoot at a very young age. The place was in and around the Channel Islands off the California coast. I believe this was prior to our deployment to Viet Nam in 65. (But since I just lost the third grade from my memory banks last week I can't be sure.) The division of 5 ships had headed North to the Islands to take part in a sweep exercise. Several planes had flown in from San Francisco to drop mines in the surrounding area of the Islands, which we then swept and upon completion put divers in the water and retrieved them. All in all, a large retrieved mine on the fantail of a rolling sweep is at best a dangerous operation. As part of this exercise we then
moved off to the Southern side of the islands for gunnery practice.
Dropping 55-gallon drums off the side, we would back off and attempt
to sink them with the 40MM. As a back up, there were several of us
on deck with M1's sinking what the 40 could not hit. And without any
disrespect to the Gunner's Mate and his crew, I'm not sure they could
hit a barn if they were inside, with the door closed. God, I was hoping
no one would shoot at us in Viet Nam. On the bridge, the skipper asked me where I had learned to shoot and I told him from my father. He asked if I thought I could do the same on the 40 and being very smug I said, "Of course." I was soon to find out how very difficult it was to have two men, one pointing and one aiming, the same gun and hit anything at all. Fortunately the 40 was kind to me that day and I was able to score multiple hits. So in that sense I loved the old girl, but still didn't trust the Gunner's Mate. If you have been on board an MSO, you know they have two berthing compartments in the bow. One upper and one lower. I slept in the upper compartment, just port side of centerline in the top bunk. In that position you have minimum clearance between you and the overhead with which to move around, let alone sit bolt upright. And I had always wondered what that large circular object was on the overhead right above me. I would soon painfully find out it was the degaussing coil for the 40MM, itself. We were still in the channel and I had come off a mid watch, dead on my feet. The division officer had told me it would be okay for me to go below and get a couple hours of sleep. So I crawled into the rack and fell into a deep sleep dreaming of beautiful women on liberty. Dreams such as this would be shattered in Viet Nam but that was a ways off. As I was sleeping this deep much
deserved sleep, there came this incredible explosion that seemed to
rock my world and caused me to sit bolt upright in the bunk. Remember
I told you there was not enough room for such a maneuver? Well there
isn't and it caused me to bounce numerous times up and down, bashing
my head each time into the overhead. Just as I would recover from
one detonation there would come another with the same physical results.
Finally after I had bloodied my head in several places I decided the
ship had been hit and baled out of the berthing compartment in my
underwear (not a pretty picture). Upon reaching the fantail, because
it was a straight shot from the berthing compartment, aft, I was informed
we had not hit anything, we were in the midst of gunnery practice,
and what was I doing out of uniform. From that day forward it was easy to tell who had that bunk. All you had to do was look at their foreheads and see the scare tissue. Slowly but surely as the owners of the bunk rotated, we all came to hate the Gunner's Mate. Memories Mark Bradley RM3 USS Leader 19665-66 |
 |
|
Capt. P. C. Lown off the
coast of Vietnam '65. |
 |
|
Signal man (unknown)
at work off the coast of Vietnam 1965
|
 |
|
Top picture. The three trouble makers. From right to left; Bill Castle, Sonar Man (Scope dope), Mark Bradley, RM3, John Shipley, Signal Man (Skivy waver). Bottom picture same three at my celebration of discharge. I never saw John or Bill again. I know that Bill had planned to go on to be a lifer. |
 |
| This was the beginning
of Typhoon Faye. Notice the 40mm had not yet been removed from the bow
as they were later. With the 40mm on the bow (made by Good Year tire company
prior to WWII) we were classified as a secondary man of war (aggressive
class). A 175 ft wooden ship aggressive? Isn't that an oxymoron? |
| Typhoon Faye By
Mark Bradley RM3 USS Leader 1965-66
Upon being relieved from patrol by another sweep division, the Leader headed home from the Philippines in late '65. Traveling North of the Philippines, we were in the classic “H” formation with Leader as flagship in the center and the Lucid, Excel, Guide and Enhance at the four outer points. We had reports of an incoming storm and right it the middle of the San Bernardino Straights we hit Typhoon Faye. For several days we experienced the most extreme conditions I had ever seen. We were taking water over the bridge and that is an open bridge. During an evening watch I had to take message traffic to the OOD on the bridge. As I finally got there the OOD turned around and was wearing a scuba diving mask. In hysterics I said to Lt. Keathley “What the hell are you wearing that for sir”. About that time one of the lookouts on the bridge called out “WAVE” and we all hit the deck with me and the Lt. Hanging on to the compass and we were all dam near swept over board. As the bow came back up Keathely looked at me and said “Do you know why I am wearing this f---ing thing now? I can’t see a damn thing without it.” I asked him if he had another one? Not funny.
Seas were so heavy that while on the bridge I watched the Guide in front of us heel over so far that both screws came out of the water. When it was all over one sweep had its steel bow plate ripped off and another had its mast twisted some 5 or so degrees. When you ran next to her dead a mid ship you could see both the red and green running lights because the yardarms were twisted so far.
Sleeping at night in the bow-birthing compartment was nearly impossible. You had to strap yourself in the bunk and then hang on as the ship “went over one and under two”. It was the only time on board the lady that I was not quite sure she would hold together. |
 |
| Look close. This
is what happens when you try to live fire a 50 cal, wood screwed into
the signal bridge. It breaks the bridge. We then went to 30's |
 |
|
This is me on the new 30cal playing
Rambo. |
 |
|
Leader inspects junks
off the coast of Viet Nam.
|
 |
|
The US Navy is a
dry Navy. You cant drink on board. But that does not stop our skipper
from calling for the South Vietnamese junk patrol to come along side
with beer. Each crew member (except those on watch) jumped into
the junk and had his fill of beer. What a great skipper we had.
|
 |
|
R&R in Subic
Bay, off patrol. Mark Bradley second from left. Bill Castle on my left.
My running mate on liberty. Bill if you see this I been looking for
you for over 40 years.
|
 |
|
Crew of the Leader
just before deployment. Ens. (Spinning George) Jones, bottom left row.
Capt. P.C. Lown skipper, left of center.
|
|
The Movie By Mark
Bradley RM3 USS Leader 1965-66
The evening movie on the fantail was the highlight of any patrol time. We often swapped movies with other ships when we came along side for fuel or supplies.
I was not prone to seasickness except when we first would leave port and then the first day of rough water. It wasn’t chronic it just came on now and then.
I was standing the 8 to midnight watch in radio central which was right outside the skippers cabin. I was watching the Teletype, monitoring distress frequencies and monitoring morse code on the fox Sched. We had to copy code in those day and didn’t have the luxury of modern communications.
We had hit a rolling sea and I was getting sick. Unable to be relieved from watch I had taken two brown bags used for classified material and put a plastic liner inside. With this between my legs I sat and took incoming messages and periodically added to the contents of the paper bag as I would get sick.
Well there came a time when I needed to get rid of the bag and in that small radio shack there was no place to dispose of it. So I twisted the end of the bag, signed off the radio for a moment and then walked out of the shack, down the captains passageway to the starboard hatch, opened it and threw the bag over the side. Now keep in mind the entire off duty crew and officers were on the fantail watching the movie.
I went back to the radio shack and locked the door and sat down to monitor the multitude of frequencies. Approximately 10 minutes later there was a banging on the radio shack door. I opened the door and there stood our supply officer “Spinning George” Jones AKA Ens. Jones (more about spinning George in another story). He stood there covered with small bits of puke all over his uniform. Evidentially the bag I threw overboard was picked up by the wind, blown aft and into one of the tall whip antennas aft, spewing the contents over the entire crew and officers. Ens. Jones looked at me and screamed, “Did you get sea sick tonight?” I said no but I knew that Shipley the signalman standing duty on the signal bridge had not been feeling well that night. He stormed off to find Shipley. Needless to say Shipley was not too happy with me for a while. And you wonder how I got out with good conduct? |
 |
| Seaman Morris came down with severe stomach pains. We called for a medical evacuation from Guam. It was hell getting that chopper close enough to load him. That's one way to get out of patrol time. |
|
|
|
The
Sea Bat Vietnam 1965 Market Time patrol
Have you ever been on a Snipe hunt? If so, after many hours in the dark with a flashlight and a bag trying to lure them in, you were then informed there is no such thing as a Snipe and you had been taken. The hunt comes in many forms and different techniques. But if you have been had, you know it. Well, the Navy has a Snipe and they are called Sea Bats.
The place was off the coast of Vietnam 1965 on Market Time patrol. The sun was setting the crew not on watch was on the fantail for a smoke and little chatter. The officer involved in this little hoax shall remain unnamed, because I am not certain he ever got over being “had”.
The crew had set a cardboard box on the fantail with a hole cut in the top. Every so often someone would go over to the box with a piece of bread, shake the box, throw the bread in and say something like “man that is the biggest Sea Bat I have ever seen". This would continue until we got a sucker. Just coming out of the Philippines, we had some new young blood on board who had never seen a real Sea Bat.
Sooner or later one of the newbies would reluctantly move towards the box wanting to see its contents. They would get closer and closer and finally bend over to look in the hole. At that exact moment, they were then hit right in the ass with a broomstick and the surrounding crew would go into hysterics. So you can tell how bored we were by the days end.
As this little capper played itself out, the skipper had stationed himself above us by the Mag Tail and was watching the new shipmates being introduced to the first Sea Bat of their young lives. After an hour or so, an Ensign, who shall go unnamed, stepped out onto the fantail to see what was going on. He also had never seen a real Sea Bat and we continued to feed it bread, shake the box and jump back. As the Ensign moved closer he asked “What's going on here, men?” Sir, it’s the biggest Sea Bat we have ever seen. He moved towards the box and we now got nervous. What exactly were we going to do if he went for the bait?
I looked up at the skipper and caught his eye. He looked at me and nodded an OK to make our move. A few more pieces of bread and the Ensign was about to see the Bat. He bent over and we stepped in and nailed him and then expected all hell to break loose. But when he got hit he jumped up, turned around and said…and I quote “God dam it stop that, I want to see the Sea Bat”. The crew could not breath from laughing so hard, and I thought the skipper was going to fall off the railing, he was sitting on, in hysterics.
So if you’re ever asked to go on a snipe hunt, decline. But if it’s a Sea Bat, don’t miss the chance because I have heard they do exist and if they would just stop hitting you in the ass you may see one.
True story and Ensign, I felt certain that the day would come when you would show someone a Sea Bat. |
 |
| 1965 Vietnam. Commodore Mine Division 93 off the coast of Vietnam "I think the shot came from over there" |
 |
|
Mr. Keithley and Mr.
More exercising....I think.
|
 |
|
A barbecue on the
fantail. I think the guy in the background got sick
|
 |
|
Me at the gun tub.
That is where I slept at night to get away from the heat
|
 |
|
The skipper was
getting into his Market Time patrol spirit with classy hats
|
 |
|
Total concentration
at the helm. 4 degrees off course was not acceptable
|
 |
|
Mag Tail in the water
during night sweep operations
|
 |
|
We were called on
to take an MSC in tow that was dead in the water off the coast of Vietnam
and drifting towards shore. The name of the MSC is lost in time
|
 |
|
Mine Division
93 in loose formation
|
 |
|
Quarter deck watch
was not all that exciting in Subic
|
 |
|
My wife and I renewing
or wedding vows in Hawaii a couple of years ago.
|
 |