U.S. Navy WWII ships's small arms compliment

[Seaspriter]

bet it was a tense situation to live through!

You are right, Bob. I was Officer of the Deck on the 4-8 (am) watch the following morning. We were standing modified General Quarters. Just before sunrise, our surface radar picked up a large number of skunks (unknown/unidentified vessels) leaving from the coast in the vicinity of Baracoa. If it was the amphibious armada of small vessels crossing the Passage, we were in trouble. A P-3 aircraft had come on station that evening; we sent it to scout the skunks. Fortunately they were just fishing boats leaving port. We all breathed a sigh of relief.

After the watch I went down to CIC (Combat Information Center) to check on the Electronics Signal Intelligence Reports (I was also Electronic Warfare Officer). EWT1 Doxford was manning the EW gear, and blurted out he just detected what could have been a ping from a Russian missile tracking system emanating from the Gulf of Gonave in Haiti. We got pinged a second time -- set all electronics countermeasures, called for full General Quarters, and alerted Washington. Fortunately the radar profile was just slightly different from the missile tracking frequency -- it came from an innocent transmission by a merchant freighter. We were lucky again. Later that day other ships arrived in the area, and two days later the CIA determined that Castro, if he had thought about an invasion, had cast those thoughts aside. We stowed the 45s, BARs, and M-14s, won our Operational Readiness certification, and breathed easy.

(Recall during the Falkland Islands war HMS Sheffield was hit and sunk by an Exocet missile. From what I was told, two missiles were fired from an Argentine aircraft. Both missile were actually aimed at a British carrier, which cloaked itself in electronic disguise, repositioning itself to the missile. Once two missiles passed through the electronic image of the carrier, one crashed innocently into the sea. The other was deadly; it locked onto the Sheffield which was behind the carrier on escort duty. The crew of the Sheffield had only 5 seconds warning -- too little to respond. The missile hit, dooming the ship. That incident was 30 years ago; imagine what electronics are doing now.)

Information

Warning: This is a relatively older thread This discussion is older than 360 days. Some information contained in it may no longer be current.