I recently attended a reunion of sailors who served aboard the USS Nimitz, once the largest warship in the world. It was the last such reunion before the aircraft carrier is decommissioned next year, and it brought back a shipload of memories.
I grew up in the College Hill neighborhood of Wichita, about as far from any ocean as you can get. I attended Catholic schools, played sports and graduated from high school without any real plans beyond reporting for work at the Cessna Aircraft Co.
One day, I ran into a former classmate who’d joined the U.S. Navy out of high school. He liked it and had been sent to what sounded to me like exotic places — San Diego and the Great Lakes — for training. At 19, I had not traveled more than one state away from Kansas.
I met with a Navy recruiter and told my family I was enlisting. My dad had been a navigator on B-25 bombers during World War II, completing 16 missions after being shot down on his first one. My older brother served in Vietnam, one younger brother became an Army Ranger and another served 25 years in the Air National Guard.
At boot camp, I was asked to select an enlisted position. I chose Quartermaster Navigation school. After completing that, I was assigned to a WWII destroyer, the USS Charles R. Ware, in Galveston. It was decommissioned seven months later, and my new orders were to report to the Nimitz pre-commission unit at Norfolk, VA., also the site of our reunion. The Nimitz was being completed at the nearby Newport News shipyard. Each morning we took a 5 a.m. ferry across the bay to the shipyard to help set up the Nimitz’s navigation department.
The Nimitz was more than three football fields long, nearly one field wide and stood 15 stories high. It accommodated 85 to 90 aircraft and just over 6,000 military personnel. At the time of its commissioning in May 1975, it was the world’s largest warship, with a top speed of 30 knots (about 35 miles per hour).
In the navy, helmsmen steer the ship in open waters, but only a Master Helmsman steers in restricted waters, such as a shipping channel, and while receiving fuel and supplies from a supply ship (called underway replenishment). I volunteered for extra helmsman duties during the Nimitz’s shakedown cruises and, under the watchful eyes of our chief and assistant navigators, soon qualified as a Master Helmsman. Here I was, a young guy from Kansas who’d never operated a motor boat, row boat or canoe, steering the biggest warship in the world.
Over the next two years I steered the Nimitz in and out of foreign and domestic ports, usually anchoring in deep water because of the ship’s size. Some countries required us to anchor 12 miles out because the Nimitz was nuclear powered. I stood watch on the bridge when dignitaries from every country we visited were brought on board and watched thousands of aircraft take off and land in every kind of weather.
One dramatic incident stands out. One morning we were taking on fuel from an oiler about 60 miles south of Cuba when the captain ordered a course change while we remained hooked up to the oiler with fuel hoses and lines. Within minutes the yelling commenced.
“You’re going to hit my @#$%^& ship!” our captain screamed over the radio to the other ship’s captain. Our navigator came around the corner shouting, “Sound the collision alarm! Announce emergency breakaway!” The alarm and six loud blasts followed.
It became obvious that the refueler was turning much quicker than the Nimitz, sending its bow toward our starboard side. Deck hands uncoupled the fueling hoses, which plunged into the ocean with fuel still pouring out of them.
Then I got an order to stop the ship’s swing by holding steady on a course our compass was already moving past. So I did it the only way I knew how, by executing what’s known as a hard right rudder. The navigator appeared again, demanding to know what I was doing. I told him and he left again, presumably to tell the captain.
We did not collide with the refueler. The job retrieving the fuel hoses began. The captain appeared, accompanied by the navigator and another officer. He let out a nervous but quiet laugh and said it had been a close call.
I continued steering the Nimitz and training other helmsmen until my discharge. I came home and earned a political science degree from Wichita State University while working as a surgery scrub nurse at St. Francis Hospital. I met Pat, my wife of 44 years, at St. Francis. We have two sons, two daughters-in-law and two grandchildren. I went on to work in contracts at Boeing until retiring.
The Nimitz is being used as a training aircraft carrier until it is decommissioned next year. It will take years to remove nuclear materials and equipment before the Navy decides what to do with the structure.
Pat and I attended our first Nimitz Association reunion in Biloxi, Miss., in 2019. The guest speaker was Rear Admiral Richard Gaskill, the second captain I served under on the Nimitz. After dinner, I showed him my Master Helmsman recertification certificate and asked him if he recognized the signature approving it. It was his. He died last year.
Over four hundred members of the original Nimitz crew attended this summer’s reunion. That included Rear Admiral Bryan Compton, my first captain on the Nimitz. He was warmly greeted by the men he’d commanded and their spouses. Going back on board after all these years, seeing shipmates we’d forgotten and being treated like royalty by the current Nimitz crew was an emotional experience.
But for me, the most important moment was being reunited with my captain, now a rear admiral, and him remembering who drove his ship safely for him.
Greg Perkins is a resident of Augusta. He can be contacted at gfperkins55@gmail.com.
