Man, the Navy had some cheesy films in the 70s.
Note that while the living accommodations are much nicer than WWII built ships, they're still very spartan compared to today's fleet.
Also, as an interesting coincidence, both URR, I, and frequent commenter/occasional contributor Esli's wife have all been aboard the same Knox class frigate, USS Miller, FF-1091, sister ship to USS Lockwood shown here.
If you were watching closely, during the gunnery exercise, you might have spotted a two second shot of a guy moving a pedestal mount with handlebars, and what looked like steel drums on either side.
That has nothing to do with gunnery, but is in fact the first generation director for the Sea Sparrow Basic Point Defense Missile System mounted on the fantail. Yes, the first generation guidance system had no automatic tracking, and instead relied on a sailor simply pointing the radars at the missile visually.
How about the Army's "The Big Picture" for advertising.
Posted by: SFC Dunlap 173d RVN | 09/24/2017 at 05:53 AM
The 5"/54 shoot was quite familiar. I worked with the Gunner's Mates and keeping status watch mostly. We worked on the Mk 42 for a couple weeks to fix all the gremlins. On our second cruise we did a shoot in which we fired 12 or 15 rounds, and the CO was pretty happy, because the gun mount hadn't fired more than a few without breaking in a long time.
We did a bunch of ASW training for Sonarmen off Hatteras, and skirted a hurricane for a few days. The seakeeping qualities of the Knox-class frigates were, umm, suboptimal.
Posted by: ultimaratioregis | 09/24/2017 at 06:46 AM
Ah, the Navy of the 1970's! Sideburns!! Mustaches!! Beards!! That's the problem with today's Navy. Not enough hair!!!!
Posted by: George V | 09/24/2017 at 07:08 AM
URR, that was optimal sea keeping for a DE. We got used to it. You Marines just have it much too easy.
Posted by: Quartermaster | 09/25/2017 at 05:11 AM