Category: USS Biddle

At some point in the three weeks between reporting on board Biddle and our departure to WESTPAC, I spent several days attending a pre-deployment briefing in (maybe) Dam Neck, Va. It required an automobile trip and “Al” drove.

The “Al” to whom I refer was CAPT Alfred R. Olsen, Jr., commanding officer of USS Biddle. I would have never referred to him then as “Al,” and don’t imagine I even thought of him with that nickname. He was “Captain.” He was 45 years old, a Naval Academy grad, and the person in charge of my life.

I think it was only the two of us from the Biddle attending the briefing, which was a few days in duration. It was at a Top Secret level, dealing with various threats posed by the North Vietnamese, Soviets, and Chinese. His offer to drive and for me to join him was one of those you can’t refuse.

We spent about 30 minutes each way in his typical suburban dad car. This senior captain and likely boot ensign made for an unlikely conversational duo. I pretty much tried not to say anything, except perhaps to affirm the wisdom of what I heard from CAPT Olsen with a “Yes, sir.”

And I did hear some wisdom . . . of sorts. Two I remember. One was CAPT Olsen’s take on RHIP — “Rank Has Its Privileges.” That was an incorrect interpretation, he argued. What people should have understood from the acronym, he said, was that “Responsibility Has Its Privileges.”

The other exchange I remember is when I commented on the proximity of the ocean. I had grown up in Western Massachusetts and had had very little exposure to the ocean. Most of my “beach” time was on lakes or ponds. At some point, I had somewhat dreamily commented to CAPT Olsen, “Ah, I smell the ocean.” He looked at me and said, “What you smell is rotting seaweed and dead shellfish.”

O . . . K.

Of course, I and the rest of the Biddle crew went on to share something like 60,000 miles riding with CAPT Olsen. But that’s another story.

CAPT Olsen was Biddle‘s second commanding officer. He had taken command about eight months earlier, in September 1968. Biddle was his fifth command at sea.

After graduating from the US Naval Academy in 1944 (early with the Class of 1945), he had served in the Pacific in WWII, the Korean War, 1958 landings in Lebanon, and the 1962 Cuban blockade. He had served on the cruisers Biloxi and Providence and the destroyer Allen M. Sumner. He had previously commanded the LST Ouachita County, destroyer escort Lester, destroyer John Paul Jones, and the destroyer tender Sierra.

In his 25 years of commissioned service, he had also served on the staffs of the Commander-in-Chief Atlantic Fleet and Commander Destroyer Force Atlantic Fleet, in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, and as Chief of Staff to Commander Cruiser-Destroyer Flotilla Four.

Post-Biddle
CAPT Olsen left the Biddle in May 1970. He later was the principal surface warfare officer on the board that analyzed and reorganized Navy training. He subsequently served as the first director of the Surface Warfare Training and Personnel Division. He retired in 1974. For the next 12 years, he worked for Raytheon Service Company, primarily in logistics planning.

He died on October 31, 2015, in Arlington, Va., at the age of 91. He was buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery. This is his obituary.

Memories of my first few weeks aboard the Biddle, tied up to one of the D&S piers in Norfolk, are not particularly clear, especially in details. (I kept a daily journal during the 26 May-21 December deployment, so that should at least allow some details.) My interaction with enlisted personnel was very limited because I wasn’t really doing anything yet, but I did interact with some of the officers, all but a very few holding higher rank.

I already mentioned I met the Captain for a “new officer” talk. I expect I also talked with the Executive Officer, CDR Allen Smith III. I thought of him as somewhat patrician, maybe because of the III in his name. He may have been very personable, but to me, the boot ensign, he was XO, a Commander, second only to the near deity who was my Captain.

I was assigned at some point to the OI Division in the Operations Department. As I had mentioned and as I will relate below, I was an “add-on,” not one of the regularly assigned officers to a ship like the Biddle. I was a “special duty officer,” unable to be assigned to ship-driving and other duties “normal” line officers would undertake. The Operations Department Head at the time was LCDR Steinbrink and my division officer was LT Grey Libbey.

. . . and a gentleman
These days aboard Biddle were my first experience with life as a Navy Officer . . . and it was pretty nice. OCS was officer “boot camp” and, after commissioning, I had lived in an off-base apartment in Norfolk while attending Intelligence and CIC training. I ate breakfast and dinner off-base. On the Biddle, I was assigned a stateroom. As an ensign, my stateroom was in the junior officer group a couple/three decks below the weather deck, near or below the water line, aft. These were two-officer units, with two bunks, above and below, along the exterior bulkhead; side-by-side compartments providing space for clothing and built-in, drop-down “desks” along an interior bulkhead; and two(?) sinks and mirrors on the opposite bulkhead. (Oh, the color scheme was grey.) There was a communal head (bathroom and showers) nearby.

Even better, I may have been alone in my stateroom initially. Those times underway when I lived in a stateroom, my roommate was a “spook,” the officer in charge of a contingent of linguists who listened to North Vietnamese communications. But until we picked up a Destroyer Squadron staff and/or the spooks, which added to the total number of officers, I may have lucked out in a single.

My clothes were laundered, my bed made, and my quarters cleaned by stewards, exclusively at the time Filipino citizens who were able to serve in the US Navy in that capacity. (Soon thereafter, in early 1971, Filipinos were recruited not only for steward duty, but for any Navy rating for which they would qualify.)

Stewards also cooked and served the food provided officers in the ship’s wardroom. The officers’ wardroom was a combination dining room and man cave. In addition to a long table athwartship to accommodate all the officers on board, there were a couple of smaller tables and couches with coffee tables for TV viewing. Under normal, in-port routine, the wardroom offered breakfast, lunch, and dinner to officers during designated periods. One could also drop by for additional refreshments, as at least one steward was always on duty.

A bright, shiny object
Several times during these first weeks, I was approached by a member of the duty section and told the Captain requested my presence in his quarters. The first time that happened, I was quite concerned. Had my efforts to be as “invisible” as possible backfired and caused complaint?

I was very nervous the first time I received that “invitation” and knocked on his door. On that occasion and several more, I was “shown off” to visiting friends of the Captain or superior officers as some sort of “trophy.” “Admiral, I want you to meet our Intelligence Officer. We are one of a very few Destroyer Leaders to have an officer with an Intelligence designator assigned” or something like that. Meanwhile, I, a 22-year-old nerd of historic proportions but slight physical stature, tried to appear manly and officer-like and answer questions without too much stammering or drooling.

Only nine days to go before we (50 years ago) deploy. Next post will be about time with Captain Olsen.

On 3 May, 50 years ago (a Saturday then), I began what I still consider my “real” time in the Navy. I walked down a D&S (destroyer and submarine) pier in Norfolk, Va., went up the gangway, saluted the ensign on the stern (the U.S. flag, not a most junior officer), requested permission to come aboard from the Officer of the Deck, and reported, as ordered, aboard USS Biddle (DLG-34), a warship soon to deploy to sea.

Though I doubt I realized it at the time, I was quite fortunate in being ordered to what was then the newest warship in the Navy. Biddle had been commissioned on 21 January 1967, a little more than two years earlier, at the Boston Naval Shipyard. (Still a student at Boston College at the time, I could have attended that ceremony, had I known. :))

These are pages from a “Welcome Aboard” pamphlet provided me, probably on arrival.

Biddle_welcome_cvr_mag

Image 1 of 14

While the pamphlet’s message from the Commanding Officer is signed by CAPT Maylon Scott, first Biddle CO, the commanding officer when I reported aboard was CAPT Alfred Olsen. That Biddle‘s commanding officer was a Captain and not a Commander reflected the status of DLGs at the time.

DLG was the acronym for Destroyer Leader, Guided Missile. Biddle was the last of the Belknap class of DLGs, the third class commissioned since 1960. Though larger than typical destroyers, these ships could not be called “cruisers,” because much larger ships with that title, such as the Chicago and Newport News, commissioned right after World War II, were still active. (In 1975, when the older cruisers were no longer active, DLGs were renamed cruisers and Biddle became CG-34.)

Biddle had not been sitting in port, waiting for me. She had put to sea on 28 March, bound for the West Indies. There, she conducted tests of recent modifications made to her radar, making six missile shoots. Returning to the Hampton Roads area (as shown in photo at top), she loaded missiles, torpedoes, and ammunition at Yorktown, Va., on 30 April and returned to her Norfolk berth on 1 May.

At some point that weekend, I likely met my two fellow ensigns — Jack Roberts and Steve Curran. Curran was a special surprise, because, though we had not known each other at the time, we had been classmates at Boston College. So we had connections and common memories that helped forge a quick friendship. Roberts was from Texas and had gone to school in Arkansas, so he was the someone different one would expect to meet in the Navy. (Curran and I were the “someones different” to him, of course.)

Curran, commissioned from OCS in mid-March, had attended CIC school in Dam Neck, Va., and had likely reported to Biddle on the same weekend as me. 

“One of my first impressions was how quiet the ship was on a Sunday,” Curran said. “Then Monday morning began with a flurry of activities, like morning colors, plan-of-the-day etc. I had to report to Capt. Olsen that morning, who gave me some very stern ‘fatherly advice.’ He said that on board his ship he wanted all his officers to respect the enlisted personnel and to realize what they wanted from their officers. That key word was ‘consistency’! He advised that I not try to be a ‘hard ass’ disciplinarian one day and their long last friend the next day. That behavior would only confuse the men and lead to a breakdown in morale. I should be ‘consistent in all your dealings with the men.’

“Another impression,” Curran added, “was getting oriented to the different levels and passageways on the Biddle. I didn’t want to look like a ‘freshly minted Ensign’ and have to ask one of the enlisted personnel how to get to ‘Officers’ Country’ or which ladder led to the wardroom.”

Roberts, the “bull” (senior) ensign, having reported to Biddle in January, said his first thoughts upon reporting onboard were that “I was totally unprepared for what I had gotten myself into. Four months at Newport had not made me a competent naval officer and I knew that. I was glad I was the Assistant Combat Information Center Officer and not in charge of anything. I just hoped my ignorance and inexperience were not so obvious that I would become a favorite target of the other officers.”

I must have also met with the Captain and have heard much the same speech. I certainly had the same feeling as Roberts. I later had the opportunity to spend “alone time” with Capt. Olsen, which I will report on. Safe to say, it was not a comfortable experience for a dumb ensign.

I earlier referred to the time after OCS as the “real Navy.” That didn’t start until the Biddle.