Re: '77' WESTPAC
That's the one where the feed pump blew. One of the scariest times on-board. I was a 3" gunner working on mount 31 (port side). When the pump blew a piece of it came up at least three decks and bounced off the gun barrel. One of the bridge officers came out on to the signal bridge and asked if I fired the gun. Then we started blowing black out of the aft stack. I found me a may west and was looking for sharks. Thank God no one died, but some people got hurt. We had to spend a month in Yokouska and I think we went into dry dock. Maybe dry dock was when we hit the bouy coming out of San Diego harbor. Locked it up between the screws. They said the reduction gears came right off the deck.
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