Funny Korean War anectdote from my father

[DiabloTX]

It was March of 1953. We were escorting the Mo on blockade and shore bombardment duty in Wonsan Harbor, which, as you probably know, is a large, fairly open, fairly shallow harbor with a number of islands. It was a place where the Gooks liked to sow mines, so we always had some minesweepers working in the area, pretty much thoughout the entire war. It was a dark night with calm weather. An unidentified blip showed up on the surface search radar. When you are on blockade duty and you get an unknown radar contact, you challenge it. So the Mo sent a voice radio challenge. The radio operator must have been a frustrated actor, because his voice was highly theatrical: "Unidentified contact, unidentified contact, I hold you bearing 278 range 9525 yards from Battle Axe! Identify yourself to Battle Axe! Over!" The last sentence was delivered with a very threatening sounding tone of voice.
 
No response.
 
"Unidentified contact, unidentified contact, I hold you bearing 278 range 9525 yards from Battle Axe!! Identify yourself to Battle Axe!! Over!!"
 
Still no response.
 
"Unidentified contact, unidentified contact, I hold you bearing 278 range 9525 yards from Battle Axe!! Identify yourself immediately to Battle Axe!! You are in grave danger of being blasted out of the water by 16" Naval rifles!! Over!!"
 
Came this response, in a quivering, frightened voice: "Oh, please Mr. Battle Axe, please don't shoot! Please don't! I'm just a poor little ol' minesweep doin' my duty! Please, Sir, please let my find them nasty ol' mines before you do!"
 
Nothing more was heard from Battle Axe.
 
Here is another Wonsan Harbor story. In my day, standard practice was to have personnel inspection and material inspection on alternate Saturday mornings. During the Korean War most ships suspended this practice when on the other side of Japan. Not the Powell. We had a gungho young skipper who had just made full commander a month after he took command of the Powell in April.
 
We had arrived in Japan on 16 Aug 1951 (yeah, my 19th birthday) and spent Sept with Task Force 77, the aircraft carrier task force in the Sea of Japan. Our first assignment with Task Force 95, the blockade and shore bombardment task force, came on 1 Nov 1951. Our first visit to Wonsan Harbor came on 7 Nov, a Wednesday; we escorted the USS Toledo, which was carrying the TF95 flag. We piddled around in Wonsan Harbor until Saturday afternoon, when the Toledo took us to Ch'ongjin for some shore bombardment. On Saturday morning, still in Wonsan Harbor, the crew of the Powell fell in at quarters in dress blues for personnel inspection. The admiral on the bridge of the Toledo happened to look around and saw the crew in dress blues at quarters on the main deck of the Powell. He got on the radio: "Campfire, what the hell is going on? We are fighting a war here. I highly recommend you get with the program." It was the last inspection we ever had on the west side of Japan.

[nirvana]

Good stuff.

[LancerVT]

Originally posted by DiabloTX
"Campfire, what the hell is going on? We are fighting a war here. I highly recommend you get with the program."

 lolz

[rpm]

That first story reminds me of what happened to us on the way back to Seattle from REFTRA in San Diego. We had just finished kicking bellybutton and taking names and had several fresh E's. We get a message that a mothership drug operation was taking place off San Francisco and are asked to join the taskforce. We were more than eager to assist.

A C130 spots a suspect ship and we set out to intercept. When the General Alarm went off we were ready to bust us dopers. We arm all the .50 cals and 20MM and the 5". We go to full tilt turbines and looked like a 378' PT boat kicking an impressive roostertail. Within minutes we are a few thousand yards astern of the suspect.

I was lucky enough to be on watch when we went to GQ and watched the whole thing from the bridge.  We contacted the ship and told them to halt and prepare for boarding. They radioed back saying they were a NOAA ship doing ocean soundings and for us to steer clear and gave us their registration numbers. The XO got the name off the hull and they ran a records search in Washington.

Capt. Flarety ordered the 5' to prepare to fire a shot across their bow. We radioed the ship again and told them to heave to and prepare to be boarded or we would fire upon them. They radioed back and repeated that they were a NOAA vessle doing soundings and for us to steer clear and do not approach.

The records search came back and it showed they were a Panamanian freighter. We radioed a final warning, they made the same reply and Capt. Flarety ordered a shot across their bow. BOOM! They decided to stop. Much colorful language was then exchanged across the radio. They proceeded to tell us how we had ruined several days work, boy were we in trouble, ect. We told them to prepare to be boarded.

As we were preparing to lower a small boat with a boarding party a supplimental report came from Washington and was sent to the Captain. Seems the ship was a Panamanian freighter all right and it had indeed been involved in drug smuggling. In fact a few years ago, US Customs had seized the ship and then leased it to NOAA. The ship was currently assigned to do ocean soundings off San Francisco.

The last words out of Capt. Flarety were "Quartermaster plot me a couse for Seattle and get us the **** out of here."