1954-1955

The Hurricane Refueling Rig.

Here's a little history about that strange tower forward of the Aft quarterdeck.

During 1954, and 1955, The Navy was looking for something better than the Oiler, inhaul refueling rig. During one of our earlier experiment's we had placed a block high up in the aft superstructure. Id did help, but it was very hard to rig, and you could not leave it in place, so we started with a straight steel tower on the 01 level aft. A winch was mounted to serve it, and tests were run at sea, but again we were stymied by the difficulty of controlling the wire with the winch. It had only one speed, in, or out and a lot of wires were broken, until one day, I had a burst of inspiration. Why not rig it like an elevator, put a heavy weight inside it, and rig it like a tenfold, now you could set the weight in the middle, and let move up and down to tend the wire by itself. We tried it and it worked better. My tour was about up, but I went to the X.O. and told him I would like to stay and finish the job. Some how, he got me another year to do it.

Then it came to me; we didn't finish the elevator. Why not put in a detent control on the winch control arm, the farther it was moved it either direction, the faster the drum would turn. Then let's add some floor indicators; not floor numbers, but lights. We had about 30 feet of travel for the weight, so the mid operating area was a series of about 20 green lights, then on the top and below there were a series of yellow lights, followed by all the rest being red. Since they were weatherproof sockets, with colored bulbs in them we could easily change how many of each color were needed. Now we set our upon sea trials. We actually went to sea and put the small boys through a refueling ordeal, but it proved to be one heck of an improvement. All the ship had to do was to receive our wire, usually on the 01 level above the refueling trunk, we did the rest. The end of the hose had a barb very similar to the one on an air force tanker aircraft. When it met the trunk, it would lock itself in., and refueling would start. When she was full, there was a quick release, just a tug on a lanyard, and we hauled the hose aboard. Then slack the wire, the receiving ship eases it over the side by the pigtail, and breakaway was complete, We found that we could darned near refuel in very severe conditions, without hazarding men's lives.