Modified February 2, 2012
I served on this ship twice during my third employment with MSC. The first time was in 1991. Ralph Arroyo was the chief electrician then. Ralph was one of those New York Puerto Ricans very dark in complexion he would really get on my case at times often uttering the phrase " learn stupid'. Well what could I do? I learned and by the time we saw each other on the USNS Spica T-AFS 9 he had to learn some things from me. There were a few eventful things about being assigned to the O.I. I was allowed to kind of take a vacation before reporting to the ship. My sister and her family as well as my father were living in Wasilla, Alaska at the time. My sisters brother in law Doug ran the Visiting Airmen's Quarters so I was able to stay there for the two weeks before I was scheduled to fly out of Elmendorf to meet the ship in Adak
During the two week visit I rented a car and took my dad and little nephew LJ for a trip up to Fairbanks. The road that goes north to there out of Wasilla is called the Parks Highway. This runs through a pass that has a bridge which crosses a gorge in vicinity of the tourist facilities for Denali Park. Driving across the bridge north bound is not has nerve wrecking as it is going back south. When returning through the gorge I screamed to keep myself from passing out. Some heights have that effect on me. When we got up to Fairbanks we went to take a cruise on a sternwheeler river boat and then returned back to Wasilla. The rest of the time I spent exploring to south of Anchorage and to Homer made famous by Tom Bodett's As Far as you can go Without a Passport . I have a picture of a Ford Model A hanging on my wall that I took at the Girdwood Gold Mine on that trip to Homer.
I flew out to Adak on a Mark Air turboprop which was probably the commercial variant of the P3-C flown by the navy. On these planes cargo rides first class. It must have taken over three hours to get to Adak. Wildlife is perhaps the most interesting thing that catches the eye when in Adak. I never saw any Moose or Bears but I did see Red Eagles and Bald Eagles with many Ravens. The ship had still not arrived when we landed so I had to go kill time at an open mess up on a hill over looking the Air Field. There is one patch of trees that jokingly have been called the Adak National Forrest. Adak is primarily composed of tundra so all of the building supplies had to be brought in by ship or barge. At the time only Military personnel and their dependents and a small group of construction workers were on the Island. Native Alaskans were not allowed to return until BRAC closed the base.
In November of 1991 while operating in the Bering Sea my daughter Elizabeth was born two weeks premature in Manila. The Red Cross message would not reach me until mid December due to communications silence. My daughter was born on November 26th 1991 at the Makati General Hospital . I could not leave the ship until we arrived in San Diego a few weeks later.
The historical significance of the O.I. is that the day before JFK's assassination he had visited the ship. The other important piece of historical data is that the ship served as the plat form for testing the Polaris Missile which would later have submarines built around it. One can still see evidence of the missile tubes in certain areas of the ship including periscopes. The picture above shows the configuration of the ship while I was on it for two assignments. During the Cold War the SALT treaties prohibited the United States from building new construction vessels to perform the Missile Range Instrumentation Ship role so once the Polaris Test Program had been completed the O.I. was refit to perform the new mission of tracking missile tests rather than acting as a launch platform. The ship had MSC crew members that ran the galley, engine room and pilot house functions. One oddity aboard not seen on many of our ships was a licensed radio officer who handled normal housekeeping traffic. CSR Raytheon had the technology and science contract both times that I was aboard. The ship also had a small contingent of Army and Air Force personnel that operated signal monitoring. As far as I know the Soviets had two vessels built for this purpose that were nuclear powered and much larger than any of ours. I saw one of these on two occasions in St.. Johns, Newfoundland once in 1981 while aboard the USNS Aeolus T-ARC 3 and then again in 1989 while aboard the USNS Mizar T-AGOR 21 As far as I know during my career MSC only operated three other ships for this purpose the USNS Range Sentinel T-AGM 22, USNS Vanguard T-AGM 19, and USNS Redstone T-AGM 20. As far as I know the O.I. was the only ship of its type to deploy world wide.
To make life more comfortable for the civilian scientists that had to deploy with the O.I. for extended periods the ship was equipped with a movie theatre, a Jacuzzi and a Sauna. It came equipped with a TV set in each room. We did not use the standard Armed Forces Radio and Television material which would have been supplied to other MSC ships. We actually received taped material of Melbourne Florida Television stations from the CSR Raytheon support staff on Patrick Air Force Base. Some time later in 1994 someone with a higher pay grade told us we had switch to the AFRTS programming. There is just one issue with the AFRTS venue, no commercials. Commercials inform the viewer of contemporary cultural trends more so than a television series such as JAG would. Those that are stuck with AFRTS programming are not kept abreast with what is happening with the culture back in the 'World'
As I recall we only hit three ports in 1991, Adak, Anchorage, and San Diego. While in Anchorage I brought my nephew LJ aboard for a tour of the engine room. He got to see the fireman light a boiler. LJ was enthusiastic about things like that at his age. The newspaper headlines during the Anchorage visit read "American Spy ship calls on Anchorage" or to that effects. A Green Peace vessel was hanging around Anchorage at the time and they did not seem to thrilled that we were in port. I cannot find archived news paper reports at this writing to back this up. Early last year I did find a source while doing research for one of my term papers.
The next time I saw the O.I. was during 1993-1994. That was somewhat of a good year to be on the ship in that we were all over the globe. Once again I would join the ship in Adak. On that voyage we called on Pearl Harbor, Yokohama, Japan, San Diego, Naples Italy, Haifa Israel, Cape Canaveral and Baltimore.
I had to borrow money in 1991 to go home to Manila because I did not make enough overtime. In 1994 I left the O.I. in Baltimore. Of all the significant events of 1994 was my operation of the Local Navy Exchange aboard ship and our transit of the Panama Canal. In those days the 2nd electrician was tasked with manning the headphones to communicate with main control during maneuvering. That would all change after my relief kind of blew it. The primary method of making overtime then was retrofitting the incandescent light fixtures in the engine room with fluorescents. The fluorescents did not consume as much power and they tended to last longer than the incandescent bulbs. Roger Olaes was the chief electrician during this tour. He was a Philippine national living in Michigan. He bred fighting roosters and traded their embryos on E Bay. One thing different about the O.I. compared to other ship assignments is that only one 2nd electrician was authorized whereas the normal compliment on other ships was two. I made my other overtime during fueling events and maneuvers such as the Panama Canal transit. On a regular commissioned vessel of the Navy the ships store is operated with appropriated funds. The Local Navy Exchange is privately funded both however designate the bulk of profit to go for Morale, Welfare and Recreation.