The USS Mobile was preparing for the ‘Bell Nugget’ exercise that would eventually take us to Juneau, Alaska, for the Forth of July celebration. One of the jobs that the carpenter shop had to accomplish before this cruise was to perform maintenance checks on each inflatable life vest we had on board the ship. There were two ways to inflate these lifevests. One way was to pull a lanyard attached to a small CO2 bottle. If the vests didn’t inflate or inflate completely after the initial charge, there was a mouth piece built in that would allow you to inflate it manually. We collected at least 500 of the goofy things and threw them into a big pile on the carpenter shop deck. Each vest was removed from each belted pouch, then we made sure each vest had a police whistle, a working D-cell lamp, and a sealed cylinder/cartridge of CO2 of the proper weight.
I had my guys remove and weigh all of the little CO2 cartridges for each vest then insure each vest had a full bottle attached. They weighed an empty bottle for tare then added one ounce (I think) for a full charge. I couldn’t believe the amount of light CO2 bottles we ended up with. A couple of hundred at least. Even some of our replacement bottles were too light to use. It took the guys two or three days to get this all done, on top of their regular work load.
We were supposed to vent the CO2 off of the rejects, then trash the light bottles. I made sure we collected each and every light CO2 bottle and I put them under lock and key. Meanwhile, I took a couple of sample bottles and headed aft to the shipfitter shop. I test fit a bottle inside of a close fitting 5' length of black iron pipe, then threaded one end of the pipe so I could stuff a cap on the end. I drilled a hole in the center of the pipe cap and welded a sharpened stub of rod in place for a firing pin. Voila’, a "CO2 Mortar Tube" for fun and games!
The first couple of tries, the thing didn’t work. Which wasn’t too good for my image since I was drawing a small crowd onlookers. I sharpened the stub a little more and tried to bend it towards the point where the bottle’s lead seal would impact. The third time I dropped a bottle down that tube, "Swoosh!", that little sucker did fly! None of the onlookers, or myself, saw where the little bottle went. I pulled the cap off to make sure the pipe was empty and sure nuff it was gone. I gave it one last try for the crowd’s enjoyment, and we lost sight of it also. "Oh well guys. That’s all I have. See you later." Off to the carpenters shop I went, with mortar tube in hand.
I found a yellow can of spray bomb and sprayed the heck out of those bottles till I ran out of paint. We had black and some red spray bombs, so we got all of the painting done before evening chow. The paint was pretty much dried, so after chow Goss, Blankenship and I headed back to the Mobile’s fantail for firing practice.
Mobile was sitting at the head of the pier with her pointy end facing the beach. Several tin cans were behind us on both sides of the pier, but our main objective was the LPH 3, USS Okinawa. At 600' long, she should be easy enough to hit, trouble was that the sun was in our eyes and we didn’t have much luck seeing those bottles fly. The bottles would fly past(but not always) the length of a tin can. However, we could see the little splashes in the water through a set of binoculars we’d borrowed. We were pretty sure we were on target after about ten rounds.
We had a lot of fun taking turns with our new toy. And once the sun had set, we could see the bottles glint in the sun at the top of their arc. Pretty cool! We had Eight to ten squids taking pot shots at the Okinawa before we were done.
Next day a couple of us took a walk down the pier to see if we could find any incriminating evidence. Sure enough, there were a couple dozen little bottles spotted laying around on the pier and probably at least a hundred or so laying around on the Okinawa’s flight deck. No one wanted to go check for sure. It took us two more days before we finally ran out of ammo.
dz
I had my guys remove and weigh all of the little CO2 cartridges for each vest then insure each vest had a full bottle attached. They weighed an empty bottle for tare then added one ounce (I think) for a full charge. I couldn’t believe the amount of light CO2 bottles we ended up with. A couple of hundred at least. Even some of our replacement bottles were too light to use. It took the guys two or three days to get this all done, on top of their regular work load.
We were supposed to vent the CO2 off of the rejects, then trash the light bottles. I made sure we collected each and every light CO2 bottle and I put them under lock and key. Meanwhile, I took a couple of sample bottles and headed aft to the shipfitter shop. I test fit a bottle inside of a close fitting 5' length of black iron pipe, then threaded one end of the pipe so I could stuff a cap on the end. I drilled a hole in the center of the pipe cap and welded a sharpened stub of rod in place for a firing pin. Voila’, a "CO2 Mortar Tube" for fun and games!
The first couple of tries, the thing didn’t work. Which wasn’t too good for my image since I was drawing a small crowd onlookers. I sharpened the stub a little more and tried to bend it towards the point where the bottle’s lead seal would impact. The third time I dropped a bottle down that tube, "Swoosh!", that little sucker did fly! None of the onlookers, or myself, saw where the little bottle went. I pulled the cap off to make sure the pipe was empty and sure nuff it was gone. I gave it one last try for the crowd’s enjoyment, and we lost sight of it also. "Oh well guys. That’s all I have. See you later." Off to the carpenters shop I went, with mortar tube in hand.
I found a yellow can of spray bomb and sprayed the heck out of those bottles till I ran out of paint. We had black and some red spray bombs, so we got all of the painting done before evening chow. The paint was pretty much dried, so after chow Goss, Blankenship and I headed back to the Mobile’s fantail for firing practice.
Mobile was sitting at the head of the pier with her pointy end facing the beach. Several tin cans were behind us on both sides of the pier, but our main objective was the LPH 3, USS Okinawa. At 600' long, she should be easy enough to hit, trouble was that the sun was in our eyes and we didn’t have much luck seeing those bottles fly. The bottles would fly past(but not always) the length of a tin can. However, we could see the little splashes in the water through a set of binoculars we’d borrowed. We were pretty sure we were on target after about ten rounds.
We had a lot of fun taking turns with our new toy. And once the sun had set, we could see the bottles glint in the sun at the top of their arc. Pretty cool! We had Eight to ten squids taking pot shots at the Okinawa before we were done.
Next day a couple of us took a walk down the pier to see if we could find any incriminating evidence. Sure enough, there were a couple dozen little bottles spotted laying around on the pier and probably at least a hundred or so laying around on the Okinawa’s flight deck. No one wanted to go check for sure. It took us two more days before we finally ran out of ammo.
dz
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