October 1952 How about my longest watch?
Later on in October, up off Buda Norway. The Wiskey was detached to go off a 100 miles, shut off all radiation and make like an enemy raider, and attack the fleet. Without radar we had a problem until I remembered my small pocket radio. When standing in port OOD night watches, I listened to it. Every time the ships were tuning up their radar and it rotated past me, the thing would buzz or voom. I identified which radar buzzed, and which one voomed. I remembered this and asked permission to bring it to the bridge, then I set it on the centerline compass and listened, after about an hour it chirped. By setting the coarse steady I was able to get a bearing on it. Over the next hour, by changing to a new course, I got a second set of bearings, and from this; we worked out the carrier and the MO's position, coarse and speed. All this was done at nighttime; the sun popped up for about 15 minutes or so, around midnight. I saw it twice, and still we were at GQ our attack was completely by surprise, We were not spotted until we actually entered the formation at high speed from the rear. After 72 hours at the conn, we finally secured from GQ. As I was relieved, Captain Foley barked at me "Crawford, I want to see you in my sea cabin right away" Now, I wondered, what I had done wrong? When we entered, he barked "Go sit on the bunk." He sat at the desk, not saying a word. This went on for a seemingly long time, until there was a knock on his door. In came the chief medical officer. He pulled from his pocket 2 glasses, and 4 small bottles of rum and proceeded to open and pour 2 into each glass, which he then handed to the Captain, who handed one to me and then he spoke, "Drink this, that's an order, which I did. "Now go to your bunk, you are relieved of all duties; I will call you when I get up! " As I was about to exit, wondering what I had done wrong, He said, "Skip now get some rest, that was an outstanding job you did over the last 72 hours, BRAVO ZULU". I woke up about 24 hours later. 
