June 1970 started off pretty slow in terms of major events. On June 13, Kent State University opened its campus for the first time since the May 4 shootings in which National Guardsmen killed four students and wounded nine. Twelve hundred students in the Class of 1970 received diplomas in ceremonies open only to those invited.
Charles Manson
The first criminal trial of Charles Manson and several of his followers, for the 1969 murders of Sharon Tate and six others, opened in Los Angeles on June 15.
Kenneth Gibson was elected mayor of Newark, N.J., on June 16, becoming the first African-American mayor of a major East Coast city.
On June 24, the U.S. Senate voted to repeal the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, approved in 1964 to support American intervention in Vietnam.
The first Gay Pride march in the U.S. took place June 27 in Chicago. There were about 150 participants.
U.S. ground troops withdrew from Cambodia on June 29. A total of 339 American servicemen had been killed during the two-month incursion.
Back from the Caribbean since May 15, 1970, and, according to shipmate Jim Treadway’s Hard Charger! The Story of the USS Biddle (DLG-34), following weekday cruises, Biddle hosted a change of command ceremony on May 22, 50 years ago.
I don’t remember much at all about the event, but I kept a copy of the program. Here’s a gallery of pages from it. You can enlarge the thumbnails by clicking on them.
Shipmate then-LTJG Steve Curran chimed in with his recollections of the day: “I do recall the eventful day we were ‘encouraged’ to attend the Change of Command Ceremony. The uniform of the day was indeed full dress blues!
“I don’t recall ever before getting fully decked out that way, but I do recall checking with the more senior officers as to what made up ‘full dress.’ What I remember is that we had to wear medals — National Defense, Vietnam Campaign and Service — and the Meritorious Unit Commendation ribbon, for our Vietnam Duty and 700 helo landings; needed to wear our sword (only time I ever had to use it); white gloves; and of course spit-polished shoes!” (Pre-corfam)
He also had fond memories of CAPT Olsen: “‘Jollie Ollie’ was fair and even tempered! I recall when I first reported aboard Biddle in May 1969, that he called me to his stateroom to “welcome me” aboard. He also gave me the following advice on how to be an officer on board his ship. He exhorted me to be consistent in my interactions with enlisted men aboard. To not try to be friendly with enlisted men one day and then be a ‘hard ass’ the next. Such inconsistent behavior from new junior officers would confuse the men and cause discord. I often reflect on his advice today, and have found it helped me in my interpersonal relations.”
(Sorry to be behind on trying to match the “50 years ago” timeframe. As are many of you, I expect, I’m a little discombobulated about the pandemic, lockdown, economic disaster we’re experiencing. But in Biddle tradition, I will try to “charge hard.”)
I hope you can tell how _salty_ the braid is on my Ensign shoulder board. 🙂
You can tell something is significant when you advance to a “junior grade.” On February 14, 1970, I received a “temporary” appointment to the grade of lieutenant (junior grade). The NAVPERS 1421/2 form was signed by CAPT Olsen.
As the form shows, I acknowledged receipt of notice of said appointment and, in what I consider now a very passive response (but the only one available), I signed off on “I do not decline this appointment.”
I had been commissioned an Ensign on February 14, 1969, so getting a promotion after only a year in grade must have meant I had done a good job. Nah, this was pretty much a done deal for all Ensigns at the time (I think time-in-grade for Ensigns now is two years). One year then without major screwing up and you got the promotion.
Not only did I finally outrank one officer onboard (Mr. Graham, but only briefly), but my paycheck grew by 16 percent. As a JG, I would make each month for the next few months (until the new pay scale in July), $449.70 a month (worth about $3,050 in today’s money).
LTJG would be the highest rank I reached on active duty, so this was a pretty major step . . . in a minor way.
On May 1, U.S. and South Vietnamese troops moved against North Vietnamese forces in Cambodia. Protests against the action began on college campuses later the same day.
An estimated 500 students at Kent State University, following protests against the Cambodia incursion, went into Kent, Ohio, on May 2 and smashed windows of local businesses and cars. Five police officers were injured and 14 students arrested before the crowd was dispersed at 3 am by tear gas. Later the same day, a group of about 600 protestors set fire to the ROTC building on the Kent State campus, prompting the Kent mayor to request Ohio National Guard troops.
Pulitzer-Prize-winning photo from Kent State, May 4, 1970.
Four college students were shot and killed by Ohio National Guardsmen on the Kent State campus on May 4. At around noon, Guardsmen fired tear gas into a crowd of about 500 protestors. Some protestors threw rocks and threw back tear gas canisters at Guardsmen. At 12:24 pm, an estimated 28 Guardsmen fired 61 shots within 13 seconds.
Twenty-seven members of the U.S. Army 101st Airborne Division were killed by North Vietnamese troops on May 6 when NVN troops overran their base 16 miles south of the DMZ.
The New York Knicks won their first National Basketball Association championship on May 8, defeating the Los Angeles Lakers, 113-99, in game seven at Madison Square Garden. Knicks center Willis Reed, despite a muscle tear in his thigh suffered four days earlier and with medication helping to reduce the pain, started the game and played almost the first half.
An estimated 100,000 people gathered in Washington, D.C., on May 9 to protest U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia. Early that morning, before dawn, President Richard Nixon, accompanied only by Secret Service agents, made an unannounced visit to the Lincoln Memorial and later spoke to protestors gathered there. “Go shout your slogans on the Ellipse,” he told them. “Just keep it peaceful.”
The Boston Bruins won their first Stanley Cup since 1941 on May 10. Bobby Orr scored his iconic goal 40 seconds into overtime to beat the St. Louis Blues, 4-3, and sweep the series.
In the second day of demonstrations at predominately black Jackson State College (Miss.), state law enforcement officers poured an estimated 150 rounds into upper floors of a campus dormitory and into a crowd of demonstrators on May 15, killing two and wounding 12.
An estimated 150,000 people gathered in New York City’s Hall Park on May 20 to support U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia.
CTC Datapoint 2200
A programmable desktop computer was sold for the first time on May 25 when the Computer Terminal Company (CTC) sold 40 Datapoint 2200 machines to General Mills. The original Datapoint could had an internal memory of eight kilobytes and could store data on cassette tapes with 130 kilobyte capacity. Most computers were leased to customers at a current equivalent of $1,100 a month.
The National League of Pow/MIA Families was founded on May 28 by a group of wives of U.S. servicemen listed as prisoners of war or missing in action. The emblem of the organization continues to fly over many governmental installations.
Morro Castle, San Juan, 1970. Bill McDonald photo.
On this date in 1970, 50 years ago, Biddle returned to sea. The ship left Norfolk for a 32-day cruise, mostly in the Caribbean.
According to shipmate Jim Treadway’s Hard Charger! The Story of the USS Biddle (DLG-34), the cruise was for training and for evaluation of modifications to the SPS-48 radar that had been accomplished during the in-port stay.
Among the port calls were San Juan and Roosevelt Roads Naval Station in Puerto Rico and St. Thomas, one of the U.S. Virgin Islands. I remember the cruise as pretty much Monday-Friday at sea and in port on the weekends. I assume I stood CIC and in-port Officer of the Deck watches, but don’t recall anything of note in that regard.
Then-Ensign John Graham recalls that the departure from the Destroyer & Submarine Piers in Norfolk was his first as a sea detail Officer of the Deck. “What a power trip,” he says.
John also remembers a somewhat “exciting” entry into San Juan harbor when he had the deck and conn.
“We had a pilot aboard, but he spoke no English and my Spanish was limited to gracias and de nada.
“The tide was flooding, I believe at some four knots, as we came past El Morro on the port side. [That could well have been just when I took the picture at the top of the post.] Biddle’s steerageway was, I believe, six knots. Blowing past El Morro at 10 knots over the ground was like a roller coaster ride.
“The Navy piers were off our port bow and the channel made about a 120-degree turn east and then to the north for the piers. I brought her left, slowly. We found the channel and parked at the pier. The pilot never uttered a word, but our navigator, Bob Combs, did. After the lines were across, he pulled me aside and we looked at the chart of the harbor with our path neatly marked on it. Our turn to port was more of a loop than a turn.
“Bob pointed his finger at the southern-most portion of our path and said, ‘What’s the depth here?’ ‘Thirty feet’ I said. ‘And what do we draw?’ ‘Thirty-four feet with the sonar dome.’ ‘You know that means we were technically aground,’ he said. I thought of the paperwork and of the Captain being relieved of command and said, ‘Looks like a barnacle-cleaning evolution to me, Bob.’ ‘I agree,’ he said, ‘and now I’m going to clean these damn pencil marks off this chart.’
“My God that O Club rum and tonic tasted good!”
Margarita
What I remember most from the cruise is a who. Whilst in a resort bar in San Juan, sipping on a glass of 150-proof rum, I spotted an attractive dark-haired young woman. Used as I was to spending time with “working girls” in Asia, I initially suspected that Margarita might be so “employed.” Wrong.
I believe ENS Curran was with me that day and he and I paired off with Margarita and her sister. They showed us some of San Juan and they joined us in the Biddle wardroom for lunch one day. This was a more “normal” relationship with a young woman, but it was still a brief and casual frolic. I remember her, however, and hope her life has been wonderful.
UPDATE: Found some more pictures from the cruise. Gallery includes a picture of me and Margarita.
There was Navy work, too, of course. Biddle conducted naval gunfire support exercises, firing onto Culebra Island, according to Graham and our fellow Ensigns Steve Curran and Jack Roberts.
“They dumped bags of lime on the cliffs of Culebra to make the targets,” John remembers. “Biddle steamed by, firing off the beam. As I recall, there were two exercises: one firing with the fire control radar and the ‘direct fire.’ Eyesight from the director: ‘Fire for effect.’ Then ‘Up five mils, left five mils. Fire.’ ‘Bingo. Target destroyed.’ Biddle scored 100 on both exercises.
“And, did I mention, I was the director officer for the shoot?” Yes, you did, John. 🙂
A cruise ship in the Virgin Islands.
Our trip to the Virgin Islands may have had tactical and training purposes, but the purpose I remember was booze. One could purchase rum and other alcohol and bring it back to the States free of duty charges. Somewhere in my collection is a picture of a Biddle sailor laying on top of a few of many boxes of booze on the pier, soon to be brought aboard.
As Treadway’s book reports, Biddle spent the end of the cruise farther north. As a test of the radar’s ability to track multiple contacts, Biddle spent a couple of days in the New York Operating Area, with its multitude of airports and flights, before returning to Norfolk on 15 May.
American Motors Corporation (AMC) introduced the Gremlin on April 1. Was it an April fools joke?
1970 Gremlin
Fifty thousand protestors marched in Washington, D.C., on April 5 in what was termed “the era’s largest pro-war demonstration. Many in the “March for Victory” disagreed with President Nixon’s decision to reduce the American commitment in Vietnam and urged the war be brought to North Vietnam.
In the Academy Awards on April 7, Midnight Cowboy became the first (and still only) X-rated movie to win the best picture Oscar. John Wayne won his first, and only, Oscar as Best Actor for his performance in True Grit.
Major League Baseball returned to Milwaukee on April 7, as the Milwaukee Brewers took the field only seven days after being the Seattle Pilots. The Brewers lost, 12-0, to the California Angels.
Apollo 13, with astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Hayes, and Jack Swigert, was launched from Cape Kennedy on April 11. Two days later, while enroute to the Moon, Apollo 13 reported, “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” An oxygen tank had exploded and electrical power was diminishing. The planned lunar landing was scrubbed and the capsule went around the Moon to return to Earth. The spacecraft splashed down safely in the South Pacific on April 17.
“Earth Day” was celebrated for the first time in the U.S. on April 22.
In a nationally televised address on April 30, President Nixon announced he had sent 2,000 American troops into Cambodia and had ordered bombing of the area by B-52s. He said it was not an “invasion” of Cambodia as all the territory targeted was “completely occupied and controlled by North Vietnamese forces.”
By this time 50 years ago, I joined ENS Jack Roberts and ENS Steve Curran in renting a house in Norfolk, Va. I know that we were there by this date in 1970 because it was where we watched the total solar eclipse of March 7, also a Saturday that year.
Being a little “artsy.” Bill McDonald photo.
The total eclipse was only visible in the southeastern US, as shown in the map of its path below. It remains the only total eclipse I’ve ever seen.
The house was “modest” and I assume the rent was pretty low. According to Jack, it had two stories, with two bedrooms on the top floor and a kitchen, living room, and other room on the ground floor. I’m guessing one bathroom. Jack and I were roomies in one bedroom, with Steve and, sometime later, LT Frank Fox in the other.
The photo below may include the house. It probably looked much like one of these houses. I don’t remember the house from the outside, except I believe there was a porch. I took the picture to try to capture the unusual “light” during a portion of the eclipse.
The house, though modest, fulfilled its function. “It was great to be off the ship and feel somewhat ‘normal,'” Jack recalls. “I think we ate a lot of TV dinners.”
We hosted a party at some point, inviting the wardroom. The only person I remember specifically attending was the then-wife of LCDR Wentz. I know he and others were there, but my memory of the evening includes only her. 🙂
That spring, we also had the pleasant duty of hosting at the house a young lady and two of her college classmates on a “date.” Problem was she was the daughter of CAPT Olsen. You can consider the awkward position we were in. CAPT Olsen’s daughter, Fran, was attractive and also a source of potential danger. As Steve recalls, “We were so glad to drop them off early and get home safely.”
Events of the nation and world in March 1970, another relatively uneventful month.
Three members of the Weatherman, classified as a domestic terrorist organization, were killed March 6 when the pipe bomb they had constructed exploded prematurely in New York City. Another member of Weatherman wrote later the plan had been to place the bomb in a dancehall at Fort Dix where U.S. service members and dates would have attended a dance. Two other Weatherman members would also be killed by a premature bomb explosion in New York on March 28.
A solar eclipse passed over the Atlantic Coast of the U.S., including Norfolk, Va., on March 7. There will be a post on that date with pictures.
Controversial cover from November 1970
The U.S. Army charged 14 of its officers, including two generals, on March 17 with suppressing information about the 1968 massacre at My Lai, South Vietnam, and referred charges for court martial. Charges against the generals were later dropped. Only LT William Calley would be tried and convicted in the incident.
February 50 years ago started off quite uneventfully. Even the first event of note is pretty iffy.
On February 13, a record album described as the first “heavy metal” album — the eponymously named Black Sabbath — went on sale in Britain. With lead singer Ozzy Osbourne, the band’s debut album went on sale in the U.S. in June.
Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath
On the following day, February 14, the British rock group The Who performed a concert at the University of Leeds. The live album, Live at Leeds, was described as “the best live rock album ever made.”
The Who at Leeds
In the U.S., on Valentine’s Day, Harper & Row released what would be the best-selling novel of the year, Love Story.
After five months, the trial of the “Chicago Seven” ended February 18 with the jury acquitting the group of charges of conspiring to foment rioting that took place at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Five of the seven — Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, and Rennie Davis — were found guilty of crossing state lines in order to incite a riot. In 1972, those convictions were overturned.
The Chicago Seven + attorney
An episode of Sesame Street on February 25 featured the muppet character Ernie singing (with Jim Henson providing the voice) Rubber Ducky for the first time. Here’s video.
Hey Jude, the second-to-last marketed album by The Beatles, went on sale worldwide on February 26. The title song had been released as a single in 1968.
Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. Only one two-lane side was open in 1970.
Sometime in January 1970, I requested and received several days (maybe a couple of weeks) of leave to return to my family home in Springfield, Mass. Somehow I had one of the family cars — a 1965 Plymouth red convertible. Neither I nor my sister remembers now how it got down to me in Norfolk. Except for maybe driving a rental car briefly in Hawaii the previous June, the trip north would be my only driving experience in more than seven months.
I remember it was snowing as I packed up the car with stuff — clothes, gifts, etc. — from the ship. I was wearing my uniform and bridge coat. On one return trip to the ship for more stuff, a sailor, whom I knew was a native of Puerto Rico, noticed white flakes on my coat.
“Is that snow, sir?” he asked excitedly. Unhappy with the cold and wet weather, and with carting stuff back and forth, I grunted something in the affirmative. He immediately ran up the ladder to the weather deck to see his first snow.
The 500-mile trip began with a ride across a then-modern wonder — the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. Connecting Norfolk with the Eastern Shore of Virginia at the southern tip of the Delmarva (Delaware, Maryland, Virginia) Peninsula, the complex structure opened in 1964. Then only a single bridge-tunnel combination (the now-south side opened in 1999), it is 17.6 miles long and includes two mile-long tunnels, which permit ship passage. Here’s a gallery of photos.
As one can see in the photo at the top of this post, there are elevated areas of the bridge and some quite low to the water. The storm on the day I drove on the bridge-tunnel was such that I clearly remember seeing waves breaking occasionally over low portions of the bridge.
The only other part of the trip I recall well was in Hartford, Conn., about 25 miles from home. In January 1970, Hartford averaged 16.8 degrees, fourth coldest month on record. The falling snow on this trip, however, was somewhat wet and heavy. I remember that because, by the time I reached Hartford, it was night and snow had built up on the car headlights to the degree that they were significantly dimmed.
I was definitely going to try to make for home despite the conditions. I sought to exit I-91, then relatively new, to clear snow from the headlights. But between the rapidly falling snow and dimmed headlights, I had a difficult time seeing exits. I remember slowly moving ahead, occasionally bumping the right side of the car up against piles of snow along the highway to find a way off the road. Finally, it worked. I removed the snow and plugged on.
As for my time back home, I don’t remember anything specific and very little in general. Connected with family and friends, handed out gifts, drank some beers. Maybe I was home for Super Bowl IV, but I think my leave was later than that.
I expect I flew back to Norfolk when leave ended.
According to shipmate Jim Treadway’s Hard Charger! The Story of the USS Biddle (DLG-34), Biddle had been placed on a restricted availability status so that radar improvements could be installed. Added to the SPS-48 height-finding radar, he said, were Automatic Target Detection (ATD), Automatic Clutter Detection (ACD), and Moving Target Indication (MTI).
