Navy Stories 8: The USS O BANNON DD-987

July 19th, 2009 by Ben Moreno

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The USS O BANNON DD-987 is a Spruance-Class Destroyer.  It was the last East Coast based destroyer of her class.  The ship was 50 feet wide, 564 feet long and could hold about 340 crew members fully loaded.

Check out this website for complete details about the ship and contact info for its former crew members.

The ship had many weapons, more than most ships in fact.  There were a large number of tomahawk missiles on the bow which I never got to see fire because it was just too expensive apparently.

The Arrival

When I got to the ship I walked up to the quarterdeck and reported to the officer of the deck on duty at the time.  He laughed when I told him I was reporting on the ship.  He said, “Everyone just got back from a 6 month cruise and are out partying and you are checking on board.”  I laughed and agreed with him about the irony of the situation.  After my records were reviewed I was sent to see the Master at Arms to get checked into my rack in the berthing area.

The Berthing

The racks in the berthing were about 3 foot by 6 foot and they were stacked 3 high.  The beds open up like a coffin so you can put your things inside.

As you would imagine there was only enough space for all my uniform, accessories, some personal items and clothing.  That was pretty much it.  Oh, we also had a single stand up locker next to our rack for hanging up dress uniforms, etc.  The berthing area design made it so quite a large amount of people could fit into the area.  If I remember correctly there was close to 100 sailors in ours.

Unfortunately, having such close quarters raises issue regarding hygiene, personal space, etc.  Let me tell you, there were many instances where we had problems with this.  People not taking a shower often enough, stinky feet, dirty clothing bags laying around, people not cleaning up after themselves, people trashing the bathroom and more.  I will go into detail of some of these issues later on in the series.  For now let me just finish describing the internal environment of the ship.

Another distinct thing about the berthing area was that we were just above the engines so we always felt and heard the hum of the engines.  After awhile I used the sound to help me go to sleep.  Sometimes the sonar would be on and we would hear all kinds of sounds which are similar to the sounds whales make.

We had a small little lounge area with a TV that we could watch movies or other programs.  I wish I would have taken pictures of everything back then, but back then I wasn’t a blogger.

The male berthing was on the aft (back) part of the ship and the female berthing was on the forward part.  Oh I forgot to mention that there were two male berthing compartments.  We had the operations (mine) berthing and the engineering berthing.  We were underneath the engineer’s berthing.

The Officers and Chief’s had their own berth’s as well in the middle parts of the ship.  I very rarely got to see them inside because for obvious reasons.  I was just a lowly young whipper snapper and the old timers and high ranking folks wanted their privacy.  It was basically like how you weren’t allowed to go in your parents bedroom when you were a child.

The Other Compartments

Anyway, when you left the berthing you went into a hall way that led to the mess decks.  This is the place where we got our food and ate it.  I remember there was a big screen TV on the mess deck where we often watch the local news.

So that pretty much covers the residential sections of the ship.  The rest of the compartments were used for all of the other functions like, firefighting, painting, engineering, weapons command, storage, etc.

Oh we did have a small weight room on our ship as well.  It was always interesting to go workout while at sea.  Bench pressing heavy free weights while the ship is rocking back and forth was always exciting.

So, I am not going to describe every part of the ship because it would take a really long time.  I will try to mention the most significant parts that I remember.  If you really want a mental picture of the ship environment, go to the link I gave early on in this post.

Stay tuned for the next episodes where I will begin to write specific stories that I remember on board the USS O’ BANNON.  They are interesting, outrageous, disgusting, shameful, embarrassing and much more.

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Tags: berthing, dd-987, first command, navy ships, uss o bannon

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 19th, 2009 at 3:49 pm and is filed under Navy Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.