Oral History Program Warren Harrington Interviewed by Robert Ross 29 July 1980 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Warren Harrington Interviewed by Robert Ross 29 July 1980 Copyright © 2012 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. 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It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Harrington, Warren, an oral history by Robert Ross, 29 July 1980, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Chief Petty Officer Warren Harrington. The interview was conducted on July 29, 1980, by Robert Ross, Ogden, Utah. Harrington discusses the changes in the military service as well as his own personal experiences in the military. RR: Chief I am mainly concerned about the changes that have taken place within the military service over the last fifteen and twenty year period, but before we begin, could you tell us something about your background, like when and where you were born, your preschool, elementary, junior high and senior high school days also some of your military experiences. WH: Ok, I was born March 7, 1941, in Sheridan, WY. After about two months we moved to Sandpoint, ID. Well, a farm about forty miles north of Sandpoint. I remained in Sandpoint up through the fifth grade. We lived at Sandpoint, I guess you would want to call it a farmer’s life, also a logger’s life. When I was five years old my mother divorced my dad and my dad raised me up through the rest of my childhood. We left Sandpoint and we went down to Payette, ID. Where my dad was an insurance salesman. I remained in Payette up through the seventh grade. After the seventh grade we moved to Idaho Falls where I lived until I joined the Armed Forces. In Idaho Falls I attended Idaho Falls Junior High and I was involved in sports such as baseball and football. After leaving Junior High I went to Idaho Falls Senior High and I was involved in sports again baseball, football and track also I was a student body, part of the student body council, which I remained on the student body council for three years. I lettered all three years in 1 high school. I did not graduate, I went up to two weeks before graduation. Our school had closed early due to repairs that had to be done to the school and we had a two week grace where all we had to do was muster once a day and if we goofed up we were in trouble. I went to a party at Sandhill, which we had a few drinks and whatever. The police showed up and I was arrested, consequently of the actions I received six months in a reformatory at Saint Anthony. Due to this I did not graduate. I spent three months at Saint Anthony and the judge figured the penalty was bad enough. We were charged with drinking as a minor and I left, I panicked and left and hit a cop car and the policeman had minor injuries and that’s why the severe sentence. After I got out of Saint Anthony I went back to high school, but since my class had already graduated I lasted about two months. RR: Chief, what can you remember about your special friends when you were young? You have Russian stations, you have German, you name it. Every country has some kind of a station down there. Doesn’t matter if they are a communist country of a friendly country, you are required to go in and make sure they have medical supplies, make sure that nobody is hurt and you also take in amount of food supplies, the Russians do the same thing we do. It is kind of a check and balance station. There is really what you want to call unfriendly land down there, everybody has a common goal. When I run in there we would drop off everything from canned cherries to, I think the biggest order we had was a hundred and seventy cases of Cognac that we dropped off at one of the Russian stations. You spend two months going to all the stations giving medical supplies then you swing back out and then you pull into Australia for two weeks. You stay in Australia for two weeks for R&R kind of get your land legs back again and find 2 out what life is really all about. You get under way again and you pull into New Zealand, Christ Church. We fill up, fill all your holes up with supplies then you make what they call a charity run. You go back in to the ice, for instance the Ross Ice Island. If it starts coming to far out, it may sound a little ridiculous, but we would push the bow of the ship into it and change its course a little bit. It’s kind of a policing action, we run into two Russian breakers down there and operate with them for a while, then we would shift over to the Coast Guard and everybody had areas that they had to patrol and take care of. While we were down there we had an airplane that was flying over. Our choppers went out to see where it went down. Came back in, they had rescued everybody but one out of the air craft. Also, when you finish your patrol down there you make a swing back to New Zealand, you stay in New Zealand for one week, and then you head back to state side. On the way back we either stop at South America or pull in to Tahiti for one week and then you either went to San Diego or Hawaii. If you lucked out and you were the honor ship you got to go to Hawaii and if you weren’t on the honor ship you went to San Diego. Then you returned home. RR: How was this honor ship picked? WH: Ok, the honor ship is picked by the number of days you are on the ice without breaking a screw. There are several things involved, one is, if you had a twenty screw ship and if the Captain was pretty sharp and you could make it the whole patrol without tearing that screw up to where you had to come back out, that was considered two points, if you went in and made all your missions, that was considered two points, and the other is the moral of the ship. If you had high moral on the ship and they kept the ship running in ship shape; that was considered ten points. Usually the guys that won was the ship that 3 stayed on the ice longest. The longest I ever stayed at sea without touching land was ten and a half months. WH: Well, during high school I run around with an organization at that time they were called a gang, but we really didn’t get in any trouble, just more of a group of guys where everyone had their own cars. I had a 49 Ford convertible. We became a part of what they called a PAL club, Police League Association. I boxed for the Police League Association for about a year and a half and 57 I went to Boise for Golden Gloves try outs. I won my division in Boise, but I was also disqualified because I couldn’t go on, because of a busted nose. I came back to Idaho Falls and worked construction work. My basic job in construction work was no more than what they call a rivet carrier. I was on the second floor up. The guys I run around with, one of them right now is an artist for a record company in California I’m not sure what the name of it is. He does all the albums. The other guy I run around with was a Mexican guy by the name of Garcia and he owns a glass company now in Idaho Falls. We were all in boxing together and we were all in sports. You can really say most of my high school career revolved around sports and school activities. RR: Chief, when did you decide to join the service. WH: Well, when three of us got together and we decided that we wanted to see a little bit of the world and do something a little bit different. The three of us went down and joined the Idaho National Guard. We wanted to go down to Fort Ord, CA and basically to see what the ocean looked like, because I had never seen the ocean before in my life. All three of us went down and went through basic at Fort Ord. Which I think was about thirteen to fifteen weeks if I remember. I went to Quartermaster School, which I didn’t 4 graduate from because I couldn’t type, seems like my fingers were too big. We all ended up in a Combat Construction outfit in the 116th Engineers. At the end of my normal six months active duty, we all kind of like it real well. We de- sided we would extend for another six months, we got a clearance to stay another six. We ended up extended the first six into two years and still being in the guard, what they call additional training. After we got back home, we all went out and stayed together working on different farms because in Idaho at that time that was where all the employment was. About twenty seven days later, we were down at the A&W drive in with a bunch of the guys we had graduated with. All talking about Idaho and things we wanted to do and what ever. One of them was joining the Navy. So twenty three of us decided why not go with him and make a team out of it? Out of the twenty three, twelve of us w was involved in sports. One way another I guess you could say we were all involved together. In the PAL Club, baseball, football, boxing and whatever. We joined the Navy in May of 58, I’m sorry, we joined in November, let me back up. We joined in May of 60 and we went down to San Diego, CA for basic training. Which at that time was thirteen weeks long. We all graduated from basic training together. We all went to different schools, I went to what they call on the job training, and some of them went to advance electronic schools, electricians, mechanics and whatever. After I left basic I went to North Island, CA as a compartment cleaner, which was required, three months working in household chores. After my three months I was assigned to an ice breaker and kind of to my surprise out of the twenty three there was twelve of us ended up aboard the ice breaker. A year later after everybody graduated from school, eighteen of us ended up aboard the ice breaker, which we had all requested. I sailed aboard the Staten Island 5 until December of 1963. At that time I had went to the North Pole, went to the South Pole twice and stopped in between like South America, Tahiti, New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand North and South, and Hawaii naturally everybody goes to Hawaii. On a northern trip, probably the most boring trip of all your under way for three months and your greatest liberty port is Kodiak, Alaska, which is not super-hot. Your duties going up there we assist the Coast Guard to keep the Russian and Japanese fleets out of the coastal waters. After we pass the Diamond Mountains around the point our job was to go up and service an ice island. At that time it was Arlis One I think. The ice island is approximately eight football fields long and about seven across. It has scientist from all different countries in the world taken different samples of the salt water, ice movement, weather and whatever. Our job was to take fuel up to them and drop it off and come back out again, approximately three months later. The run south was basically to take care of the ice islands down south. We would pick up set of tankers, we would operate with the east Guard, We would pull in next to the ice and form a convoy and being icebreakers our job was to go in and break a channel to get as close in as possible. Time at sea on an icebreaker was usually about four months without stepping on land. About every two weeks we would head into the ice and we would go out on to the ice just to get off the ship, what we called liberty. We played football, chased Penguins, seals and just goofed around. Something to just break the monotony, so we wouldn’t go stir crazy. Like heading down to the Antarctic. Once you got down to the Antarctic that’s when your biggest job started was off .loading all the cargo ships. You would take in two cargo ships at a time, one breaker would break ice around them so the pressure didn’t crush the hull and the other breaker would help off load all the cargo. In all the working 6 hours is approximately eighteen hours a day. You work in four hour shifts, you work four hours, take thirty minutes off, go aboard get some hot coffee, get something to eat and then be back out again, until all the cargo is off loaded. One of the reasons for the long hours is, the pressure of the ice always shifts and you worry about it, if a ship is in too bad, you got to change mooring, you got to get out of the way, you got to get the freighters out because they are a thin hull ship. Too much pressure will crush them. Once you off load the tankers you come back out, you escort them all the way out to the pancake ice, that’s a very thin ice where there will be no damage to the hull. From there you go from them and you have two months station off. We usually went down to the end of South America and up a couple of peninsulas. There were stations throughout. RR: What can you remember about your basic training? You took Army Basic when you was in the National Guard and then you went to Navy boot camp, what is the big difference in in those two boot camps. WH: Well, the Army basic training I think was more physical. The discipline in both of them I’d say was identical. If you were told to do something, you did it. If you really didn’t agree with it at the time, you still did it because somebody had a reason for saying it. The schooling that was taught in both the Army and the Navy was about identical. It was more to get you acquainted with the service you were about to go in. It was a weeding out thing, those that just couldn’t handled somebody giving them an order, otherwise like, I hate to use the word, like mommy boys. If they couldn’t follow an order there was no way they could give an order. RR: Once you came back from the Icebreakers and you landed in San Diego or Hawaii, where did you go from there? 7 WH: Ok, I left the Icebreakers, not really under my own free will. I wanted to stay aboard the Icebreaker, but I had got married and my wife was having a baby and under the rules of the ship a married man can make only one trip into the ice. I left Seattle, where we were tied up and went to Great Lakes IL to engineman sea school. The class I took up there was on Fairbanks, Moores, Alcos, Jimmy’s and you name it if it was a diesel we had it. Than I was extended for six months due to I came in the top one third of my class and went to gas turbine school. I completed gas turbine school and went to variable pitch propellers which was for mine sweepers, which I was kind of hoping to go aboard. I stayed up there, I got ready to leave, you put in a preference and beings I came out high in Fairbanks and Moor diesels I ended up in, also Jimmy’s, I ended up going aboard a Submarine tender in Charleston, SC. At that time I was a little unhappy, because I wanted to go aboard mine sweepers. At that time they had a restriction again, if you were married, all the mine sweepers were deploying and I couldn’t go aboard them. So I stayed aboard the Tortoise and for, until 1966 in December. We left Charleston three months after I was there and t the Trotis was deploying over to Guam to set up a new sub base. I didn’t ride the Trotis across the ocean, I went to Submarine school in New London, CN which is Augsboro package. I stayed up there for approximately fifteen more weeks of schooling on how to work on different types of equipment aboard a submarine. Such as hydraulic, air conditioning, refrigeration, welding, electrical, 02, N2 generators you name it. I flew to Guam where I met my wife, she got over to Guam approximately, oh, I guess about a month before I did. I was reassigned back to state side duty. I went to another submarine tender which was the USS Sperry, I stayed aboard her until 1970, January 1970. At that time I put in for sea 8 duty again for any ship afloat and come know, he just couldn’t settle in right. For instance he relaxed the hair styles, he said alright a guy can have long hair, but he didn’t come out and say how long can it be and there was quite a conflict between some of the older guys and some of them new guys. Same way with wearing civilian clothes off the ship. He didn’t come out with what standards. There was so many changes within about a year they came so quick, the discipline just dropped. In other words, you tell a guy to do something and he would say well Z-grams phone book says I don’t have to do it that way and it kind of tied all your Senior Chiefs hands as far as controlling their own men. RR: What do you think about the attitude of the younger generation? What is the difference in it and the time that you went in? WH: The attitude basically is the same as far as what they want out of life. When I joined, I joined to serve my country. Up until about a year ago a guy joined just for what they could get out of their country. They said well the service owes me something and I don’t owe them nothing. I think once we got into the hostage situation you seen the trend change, we had more guys come in and say, hey, I want to serve my country. What can I get? But, really I don’t know, the attitude kind of goes up and down. RR: What about the pay system, has there been much of a change in the pay system over the last ten to fifteen years. WH: Yes, quite a bit. When I joined I was making somewhere right around fifty dollars a month.as a new recruit going in. I think when I made, let’s see what was it, when I made 9 E-4 I was drawing probably about two hundred and fifty dollars. A new recruit going in now, pay scale as of today draws four hundred and forty eight dollars, just starting out. RR: Did the pay progressively change from the time you went in up to today. WH: No, Well I wouldn’t say progressively. For a long time when the pay raises, came out they came out on a percentage scale, Ok, when they came out on the percentage scale the pay raises weren’t that fair until they changed it a little while back and then they give a higher percentage through about two pay raises to you lower rated, like your E-1’s, I think it was E-1 through E-3. It kind of brought all the pay scales more equal. For instance if a young gentleman was drawing only fifty dollars a month and they came out with a five percent pay raise, well he drew a small percentage of that, you take like an E-9 or an officer with a five percent pay raise, they were going to draw quite a bit of money. Well they came out and changed it. They came out and gave, like I said the lower rated man a higher percentage of this. In other words where the higher rated man to find out I was assigned back to the Trotis in Guam. This time when we went back to Guam we decided we weren’t going to leave for a while. I stayed in Guam until 1974, July 1974. Only two years of that I was assigned to the Trotis. When my tour was up they assigned me to state side shore duty which I turned down and they assigned me to the Navy Supply Depot in Guam. At the Navy Supply Depot I ran the fuel depot for the Pacific Fleet. RR: Where did you go from there? WH: Ok, when I left there in 74 I came to, I was assigned to Navy Recruiting. I been on Navy Recruiting for approximately six years. According to Recruiting Command and my code 10 number, even though I got twenty two years in now I could stay in recruiting for another eight years. Right at my thirty year mark. RR: Complete your thirty years here at Ogden on recruiting duty. WH: Right. Well I’m going to leave come one October. I am going to become a zone supervisor back over to Portland. RR: Chief, what changes have you seen in the Navy as far as the discipline is concerned. WH: I would say that the discipline is probably lower now than it was when I first come in. When I first joined you had a break between your enlisted and your Chiefs, other words when you went to work in the engine room you usually worked for an E-5 and whatever he said was law, he told you to do something you did it. There was no complaining, moaning or bitching you just got in and you got the job done and you were on your way again. Now I would say it is a little bit different. Your Chiefs run your engine rooms, where they didn’t before. Now if a guy really don’t like something, instead of taking him down on the lower level and having a heart to heart discussion with him and say this is the way it is going to be done and thats it. He has different means of going up through the chain of command and say Hey I don’t want to work for that guy I want to work for somebody else. Seems like the command in some instance will let him shift divisions. I kind of like the old way of doing things. It seems like the job got done faster, and still left a lot of room for a man to do his own thing, if he could find a better way to do a job, he did it. Seems like some of the guys you get in now, you got to set down and say here is step A do that, than go back here is step B, etc. I don’t know it just seems like they don’t have the initiative they use to have. 11 RR: What do you think was the big problem behind this discipline change? WH: Oh, some of it came about when Zumball came in with all his Z-grams to relax the standards. He came up with some really super ideas, but he phased them in so quick a guy couldn’t, I don’t think I was drawing five percent the lower rated man at one time was don’t quote me on the figure, I think it was, He drew something like ten to twelve percent. By doing this, now I kindly think the pay is pretty good, I think throughout all the rates it’s pretty equal. The only difference is notice now, when you make a strip. You go like from E-4 to E-5 instead of noticing a two hundred and fifty dollar jump it’s down to, I think about a hundred dollars. You notice your pay raises for your strips is a little bit less, But you look at the overall picture it really helps you out when you’re E-l through E3 too. RR: How about the assignments and duties, has there been many changes in the types of assignments and duties a young man or woman can get today compared to what it was when you went in. WH: Yes, quite a bit. Your young man now have what they call preference sheets. You would have to really look at one to see what I am talking about. Before you had three choices and now if you break it all down I think you have ten choices. That ten choices breaks down to sea duty, oversea shore duty and shore duty, state side shore duty. A young woman now, I think has been the biggest stride. She can go aboard a Navy ship where she was outlawed before by congress, which I’m not going to say a bad idea or a good idea, depends on which way you want to look at it. For a gal it’s a darn good idea because it has increased the job opportunities they never had before/ She is not stuck 12 with let’s say all state side shore duty. She is not stuck with just overseas shore duty. Now she has a bigger selection. RR: Compared to when you went in and now, the females that’s in the Navy now. What type of jobs then compared to now. WH: When I first came in about the only thing there was a woman could do was in clerical duty, hospital corpsman, dental tech, and cooks which now is your Mess Management. Now they can go into any job a man can go into except if it’s combat related. For instance you’re torpedo men, your missile tech and these type jobs. Six years of recruiting I have never seen one of those type jobs appeal to a woman yet. Now they are going into your mechanical, welding. We still screen them real well when they talk about going in to be mechanics and different areas. For instance if a girl real small is told, look there is a physical requirement. In these areas we try to talk them out of it. RR: Has there been many problems with women moving into jobs normally held by men? WH: Not as much now as when it first started. When it first started we had girls, they didn’t take into consideration there was so many guys out to sea that were eventually going to rotate to shore duty. Well all of a sudden these guys are getting ready to rotate and there was no billets. So they went back to the drawing board and they said hey we got a problem. The problem was they got to leave so many billets open for the guys that are coming back for their normal shore duty assignment. The system they got now, they can only take one rate where they got a bottle neck and that’s in rigging. RR: What about the promotion system, has there been much of a change in the promotion system in the Navy. 13 WH: Yes, quite a bit. When I came in you came in as an E-l and after basic training you were automatically promoted to E-2 on your graduation date, kind of a bonus type deal. Six months later you got E-3, a year after that you got E-4 and on up the ladder. When I first came in you didn’t have to have any time in service requirement for Chief. Right now the requirements have changed quite a bit. For instance if a young gentleman comes in and goes on active duty, six months after he leaves Salt Lake or where ever he joins from, he is automatically promoted. The scale now is six months to E-2, six months to E-3 and a year for E-3 to E-4. Now here is where the big time requirement comes in. Now to make E-7 in the Navy you have to have nine years Navel service or I should say nine years total service. For instance the scale still goes up from there, An E-8 has to have thirteen years, An E-9 sixteen years. Also we have opened the rates up we have what they call the proper grow criteria. The grow criteria says now when you get twenty years in the Navy, if you have not passed the Chief exam or been promoted, you cannot cross the twenty year. To go pass twenty four years you got to be an E-8, to go pass twenty six you got to be an E-9. RR: How about the drug and alcohol problem? Is there any problem with that in the Navy? WH: Well, yes there is. The drugs when I first came in the biggest problem was alcohol. I think drugs at that time was not really known, anyway I didn’t know about it. Seems like the old tradition you wasn’t a sailor unless you had a drink in your hand. This tradition got changed quite a bit, oh, in the last couple years it kind of got changed in the wrong direction. With the newer generation coming in it seems like you find people messing around with the drugs, as far as hard drugs I’m not too much up on them right at the moment. Kind of going back and forth a little bit the Navy in the first part of the 60s kind 14 of changed some of their club rules state side, like they were closing them down during working hours, opening them up a little bit later at night to try to control the alcohol problem. This really didn’t help that much. It seemed like the ones that already had the problem they found different ways of going off base or whatever and solving their problem of getting a drink. For a long time the Navy thought the other services had a drinking problem cause sailors would go to sea for two or three months at a time and they would come back and they said gee they really didn’t have a problem that bad, because look you got to quit for a while, but they found out that it wasn’t really that they quit, it was kind of a controlled environment. Some of your Chiefs and your officers were able to hide their problem a little bit better than your E-6s on down, because they had Chiefs quarters and they could snick up there during noon hour and have a couple quick drinks and go out and no one would notice the difference same way with the officers they had their state rooms so they had their little stash going. Navy cracked down on the vessels and now there is some high penalties if you get with alcohol on a ship. The problem really didn’t cure itself until they came up with ARDAX, where, let’s say for instance this old Chief or old First Class or whatever was having a problem instead of sending him to mass and telling him you got to quit drinking, they finally started sending them where they could a little bit of help. Well we thought we had it pretty well knocked, the drinking problem was pretty well going down, the Navy was real happy, but we didn’t notice coming in the back door we had the younger generation with their drugs. The Captain was sitting there saying, hey I feel real comfortable about the whole situation. Our drinking problem is cured and then we found out we had a drug problem. Right now they are trying to cure the drug problem. I honestly don’t think the drug problem is any 15 worse than it is out here on the streets of Ogden, probably about the same. But we found out we got to be very careful with the young guys coming in and one is to educate them. You know if you are high on speed or whatever, you can endanger the life of a buddy and on, on and on. We thought this would really help the young individual. In some cases it made them stop and in some cases the guy would say, hey, the guy I am watching is as high as I am so who cares. Now we have increased the surveillance on the ship. When a ship pulls in to a foreign port dogs come on board and check it out before anybody can go ashore. I don’t know if we really cured the problem or if they found a new place to hide it. It seems like the drug problem is less coming in, but there again when we open our eyes up and look around we will probably fid it. Than we will have another problem coming in from a different angle. RR: There has been a drastic change in the education benefits, could you explain what these changes are. WH: Ok, as you know the old GI Bill is out. The old GI Bill was basically was if you passed one hundred and eighty one days you were eligible for so much college benefits and etc. When the old GI Bill went out, they brought in a new system through VA. The new program is, for every dollar you put into a savings fund the government will match it with two, so when you decide to go to college, let’s say you got two thousand dollars in the fund of your own money all together you got six thousand dollars of matching funds. While you are going to college, for every three dollars you spend only one dollar of that comes out of your fund. So when you finish college and you haven’t used up all your funds, it can act as a savings account, without interest of course. 16 RR: So it’s up to the individual how much money he wants to save toward an education when he gets out of the Navy. WH: Right. Basically they got two scales, one is a fifty dollar a month and the other is seventy-five dollars. RR: There was a slight shift in the responsibility, I know it took place in the Army between the NCOs and The Officers. Did the same thing go on in the Navy? WH: Yes, it sure did in a lot of ways. Like I said earlier, a Chief in the engine room was something you very seldom ever seen. The guy who run the engine room was usually a Second Class and maybe a First Class. The Chiefs were your assistant division officers and your division officers. Over a period of time you kind of seen the Chief go back into the engine room. You seen a lot of your officers come down as division officers and assistant division officers, which took away a lot of responsibility from the enlisted. This also caused a lot of guys to get out of the service, because here was a gentleman that had never had any dealings with machinery in an engine room or the machinery aboard a vessel and he was the man telling you how to operate it and how to run it. Where the Chiefs hands were tied, you could actually say he was more a junior enlisted personnel. Here in the past we have noticed that this also effected the moral. Here is a young gentleman, he made E-5 and he knew his equipment real well, he knew what was happening, he still didn’t have any responsibility. The Navy has turned that back around again, you find the Chiefs up as division officers, assistant division officers and your Second Class and First Class in the engine room. Even back in the Pentagon now, we had Captains being relieved by E-9s. Due to a survey, they said hey, we got a lot of talent here we want to keep. Now the service is being designed to keep your senior 17 personnel by giving them high positions. Now you find out your young guys are staying because they are saying, look what I can work up to. RR: Are there any other major changes you seen take place in the Navy Over the last fifteen to twenty years. WH: Yes, there is quite a few of them. One of them is the uniform. We use to have what we called the Cracker Jack the bell bottom type uniform. They took a survey and found that everybody enjoyed the coat and tie better, anyway they thought they did. We went to what they call Chiefs uniform. A lot of the young guys was upset about it, because they like the tradition, so now we have shifted back to the cracker jacks or the bell bottom type with an option for the next two years of wearing a coat and tie. The majority of them want even touch the coat and tie, they like the old type. Also the ships have changed. When I first came in we had the old World War II type stories, which I thought was great until I went aboard the, like the Chicago. One ship now can replace approximately four ships. The gear on them now is all sophisticated. To be real honest with you, I’m just about ready to retire because the equipment has really about passed over me. Some of your new modern equipment, let’s say for instance on the Chicago, your DEs and FFs, I would have a hard time working on them. They have went to computers, like all your fire control system is on a computer, all your missiles, where we had to set them and track them thats all done by computers now. Down in your engine room, the new turbine, the boiler. The boiler tech use to be the old fire job, you went down and you would build up the water pressure and you fired off the boiler and everything was hand controlled. You get on your twelve systems now and that’s run by computer board. Your BT use to go through ten weeks of school, your advanced BTs 18 now go to a little over a year to school. You get into some of the different areas now all the way down to the cooks, we use to have what we called the commissary. He use to order things, you had your baker that use to bake everything by hand and we had the regular cook, he went in and he cooked one meal, one type of meat, threw it on the chow line and that was it. Now with the new Mess Management Specialist you go through and it’s all gourmet cooking. One is to build up the moral of the troops. There is no such thing as sitting down all night figuring the menu out. They walk over to the computer now and poke it in and out comes the menu. They minor corrections one way or the other. But over a period of time I think all services have up dated themselves so much some of the older guys, let’s say like a guy that has been in twenty five or twenty six years in the Navy or whatever service. They have missed some of the new schooling and they are about ready to retire and let some of the new guys come up and take over. RR: Chief Harrington, I thank you very much for this interview. This tape and transcript will be on file at the Weber State College Library and will be made available to anyone that wants to draw it out to listen to it and go over the transcript. WH: Ok, Thank you. 19