I arrived on the USS Leader at Detyens Shipyard, Mt. Pleasant, SC, in
October of 1982. During the yard period, the decks were redone and I’m sure
we got mine gear replaced and repaired too. I was immediately sent to
SSQ-14 (Squeeky 14 sonar) school at the minewarfarecenter, Charleston naval
base, for 8 wks. We also got a new sonar, but later when the General
Electric techs came on board for sonar inspection (I’m thinking around Dec
82), they had to solder every thing over again that the shipyard's
workers did. The men from GE were on board seven days a week, from
then until we left on our cruise the following June….and I mean, they were
not done until the day before we left for our cruise. They didn’t take long
breaks, and they worked thru lunch, and of course, us sonar men were always
there to assist, and they stayed till 6 or 7 at night. Boy, STG3 Bradley
Barnes and myself, put in a lot of hours with those guys and other civilian
techs that came on board later, a trend that we would follow throughout my
entire time on the Leader.

In 1982, the Leader was in Detyens Shipyard, Mount Pleasant, SC for
overhaul. After a successful yard period, she deployed on a 4 ½ month
Med/North Atlantic cruises in June 1983, in support of Uniform Yowl, a
STANAVFORCHAN (NATO’s Standing Naval Force in the Channel),
exercises in the English Channel. The exercise was conducted in 9 straight
days in the channel, in some of the roughest sea conditions to conduct mine
hunting/sweeping. The Leader classified contacts with 100% accuracy, tops
in the US sweepers, yet did not receive the Battle E. (politics there, and we
all knew it before the announcement) The ports hit were Rota, Palm DE
Majorca, Malaga – Spain, Brest and Dieppe France, Lisbon Portugal,
Oostenveld and Zeebrugge Belgium, Portsmith, England, Madeira, an island of
Portugal, and Bermuda. Mine Hunting and minesweeping exercise were done a
little between ports leading up to the main exercise in the English Channel.
Other mine sweep naval ships accompanied from the British, Belgium, Dutch,
French, Spanish and German navies, some of them being our old minesweepers
(like Belgiums De Brouwer (M904, ex - Nansen, ex - MSO499).

The Leader was in England at the time of the shooting down of the Korean
jetliner by the soviets. Upon returning to the states in October of 83
until June 84, the Leader's mission at home was mostly local ops and channel
plotting (q-routing) with a trip to Key West included, for deep bottom mine
hunting. To accomplish this, a new sonar and cable was installed by Applied
Research Laboratories (ARL) of Austin Texas. The articulated struts that
were used on this class of sweeper, to lower the sonar, were replaced by a
cable, much thinner than the struts, allowing more wraps around the drum,
giving it a dip depth of about 400 feet, much lower than the struts allowed.
But the struts kept the sonar facing forward, for bearing purposes, the
cables did not. To rectify that, motors were used in the sonar to compensate
for free-spinning sonar. It was a challenging task, but to the credit of
ARL, it was a success. But the navy was already going the way of the Mine
Neutralization robot, and deeper capabillities were never pursued.

On the way back across the Atlantic, very early, a transformer blew that would leave us with a degraded loss of power, which included radar. This was not too serious as we traveled with the three other sweeps for support. I believe we had one flown to us in Madeira, but it wasn’t any good. A second one was transferred to us just outside Bermuda. Finally, after all that time without radar, it was sent to us by small boat transfer....but in the transfer, it was dropped in the water. The transformers were taken off one of the old “D” boats (Direct, Detector, etc.) that were decommissioned, and I think were still in the Charleston area.

I have some photos, mostly from liberty on the cruise, and one of Brad,
Ozzy (another Sonarman), and the ships Corpsman (not ozzy ozborne) next to a
mine we classified and pulled up on deck of the Leader, I’ll have to find
it for you and send it later.

One more story...as I served 20 yrs. in the
navy, one of my most roughest sea encounters, was right there in the
channel. Nine straight days of nasty weather. It was so blasted windy. The day
before we got underway from Zeebrugge, my runnin' mate, RM1 Leberge and I
were invited over to the De Brouwer for 12 ounce cokctails, as well as other
Leader sailors. We all had a great time, and exchanged personal items as
gifts. I got an enlisted uniform cover, Al got a trumpet. It was so windy
that night on the short walk back to the Leader, we had to lean forward to
walk. Al was blowing into the trumpet as hard as he could, but it was
facing into the wind. The wind was blowing so hard that no sound was coming
from the trumpet, so I tried it. I was a tuba player from high school, so I
know I had enough wind to do it, but, nothing from me either...I still talk
about that wind to this day...absolutley amazing, and we endured 9 days of
it.

There are so many more stories, I loved that duty, truly, one of my
favorites. The more I write, the more I remember, the more I want to put
in, but I’ll keep it short. Thanks so much for asking, this was a pleasure
to contribute. We had a great crew, and I only ran into one of them since I
had left the Leader… HT3 Amsden, who ripped a urinal out of its place
while while having a good time on liberty, somewhere, overseas during the cruise…lol.