stopping sara
....anda balky fuel pump
USSSaratoga CVA-60
1962
There were few slackers in the more than 5000 men aboard Sara. Everyone had a job to do and was expected to do it. Each man combinedhis efforts with all the others so that Sara could train for the missionshe was charged with — the mission of making war. Those combinedefforts pushed Sara's 58,000 tons through the sea in excess of 30 knotsas she launched and recovered aircraft at a rate of one every 30 seconds. More than 15,000 meals were served daily. Teeth were pulled, boneswere set, cuts were sutured, hair was cut, confessions were said and letterswere written. Those efforts and thousands more made Sara the fightingmachine she was known to be.
It took the entire crew to make Sara function and no man, alone and byhimself, was likely to make Sara alter her course or change speed. A man falling overboard from the flight deck knew that Sara would continueon her way and leave his rescue to the helicopters and destroyers on planeguard station. A plane crash on the flight deck had little effecton her way through the sea. But, hold onto your hat!... I wasresponsible for setting into motion events that made her slow her enginesenough to put her in danger.
This is one of those sea tales that takes longer to tell than it took forthe actual event to happen.
And, in that capacity, we had just finished an overhaul of one of our fueloil pumps and were so beat that we just headed straight for our bunks toget some much needed rest. We didn't even bother to perform a testrun on the pump. We just removed the binding wires and "do not operate"tags from nearly a dozen valves and left the space. We knew the othertwo fuel pumps would be more than sufficient to take care of any boilerload demands that came up.
Well, ol' Murphy's Law follows sailors around just like it does other poorschmucks and, before I reported for my regular watch about six hours later,someone had putthat pump on-line. When I relieved the lowerlevelpetty officer he told me to... "Keep an eye on that pump you overhauled,it ain't working right." He went on to tell me the pressure droppedtoo low when "cutting-in" a burner and went too high when "cutting-out"a burner. As he started for the ladder he turned and off-handedlyremarked that my two firemen should stand a tight watch and not stray toofar from the firing alley. "We're alongside an ammunition ship takingon ammo," were his parting words.
I drew myself an eye-opener cup of coffee and ambled over to the fuel pumps. As I sipped my scalding cup of mud I eyeballed the on-line pump, givingit a close inspection. It was putting out a normal 1000 pounds pressureand everything looked hunky-dory to me. But, still, I wanted to seefor myself how much the pressure fluctuated when lighting-off or securinga burner. So I yelled at my burnerman, "Cut in a burner!" Heopened a burner oil valve and the pressure dropped to 900 pounds. Hummm, that's not kosher I thought and readjusted the pressure to 1000pounds. Then I hollered at him, "Cut out a burner!" He closeda burner oil valve and the pressure increased to 1100 pounds. Well,I scratched my head thinking that's sure as hell ain't kosher, either.
I readjusted the pressure to 1000 psi and did a few more tests of lighting-offand securing burners. The results were the same. So I stoodthere and mentally visualized what each part of the pump did when a burnerwas lit-off or secured. After a minute or so of scoping out the problemI fixed my eyes on one of the smallest valves on the pump. Ah ha!,thinks I, there's the problem!
That little valve was more important than its size would suggest. The pump's fuel oil discharge pressure passed through it and into the pump'spressure regulator. The regulator sensed if the pressure was aboveor below 1000 pounds and adjusted steam flow to the pump's turbine to correctit.
I saw that the valve was closed and immediately concluded that the pumpwas operating with no "feed-back" to the regulator. And the instantI made that determination my brain quit functioning and I stopped thinking.
My hand shot out for the valve quicker than a kid reaches for a $5 billon a sidewalk. I gave a twist to open it and lordy, lordy!... thatwas my undoing because that was the last thing I should've done! It's been said that for every action there's a reaction and the reactionI got wasn't one that I wanted... the pump stopped dead!
The fuel pressure dropped to zero before I could sprint to the firing alleyto yell... "Loss of fuel oil!" The burnerman immediately climbedthe boiler front knocking out burners while the other man picked up thetelephone and told the chief boilerman in the control booth what was happening. I ran back to the pump row and in just a few seconds I had started thestand-by fuel oil pump. I jacked the pressure up to 1000 psi andran back to the firing alley to tell the burnerman to relight fires. Oh no! No one was there! Both men were gone!
The engineering officer of the watch in central control was notified ofour casualty and he ordered our space to cross-connect steam systems with#3 MMR. So, #3 MMR began sending steam to our #2 engine and, of course,the two engines began to drag the boiler in #3 MMR down. Number 3MMR began screaming about their boiler being dragged off-line so the engineeringofficer ordered us to also cross-connect with #4 MMR.
Now there were three engines dragging steam from two boilers and both ofthem were losing pressure. So, to prevent the two boilers from automaticallyclosingthe steam-stop valves when boiler pressure dropped to 1020 psi, the enginethrottlemen in #2, #3, and #4 MMRs were ordered to"conserve steam". But holy cow!... the only way to conserve steam was toslow theengines. Well, now, don't you see what's about to happen?
The throttlemen in the three affected main machinery rooms began to slowtheir engines and Sara began to lose her station alongside the ammo ship. The deck hands that were tending the lines on the ammo ship began payingout extra cable and hawser to maintain connection between the two ships. And connection was imperative because there were bombs of all sizes hangingin cargo slings on the way to Sara. And during all that time thethrottleman on #1 engine attempted to make up for the loss of way by increasingits speed, but that effort fell far short of compensating for the otherthree engines.
Well, now, that wasn't a recommended thing to do. In fact, that wasn'teven supposed to be considered as an action of last resort. It wasone of the most flagrant violations of engineering rules that I could havedone but I needed fires in the furnace, any damn way I could get them,and the consequences be damned!
My burnerman popped open a burner valve and sprayed a stream of oil intoa red hot, glowing furnace. After a few seconds the oil vaporizedand exploded with a powerful but muffled whoomph!, blowingsoot from every leaky joint and puffing out the sides of the boiler. I sent one man to open the boiler steam-stop valves and the burnerman beganlighting off burners as fast as he could. I picked up thephone and told the control booth that we had fires re-lit and the boilerwas on-line, ready for all orders.
Our throttleman started to bring our engine back to speed and the otherspaces closed the main steam cross-connect valves, steaming on their ownboilers and bringing all engines back to speed.
Sara started to inch her way back on station... and just in time, too,because she'd dropped so far back that her line handlers had already takenup sledge hammers and axes, anticipating an order for an emergency break-away.
Only about two or three minutes had passed from the time I tripped thefuel pump off-line until steam was restored to all engines. As soonas order was restored in our space chief Bellflower came stumbling downthe ladder screaming that he was going to write me up for losing fires. We had a nose-to-nose shouting match and I called him a stupid son of adog for ordering our main steam-stop valves closed. (The engineeringrule in that era for loss of fuel pressure was to leave the steam valvesopen and try to relight fires before boiler pressure dropped to 85% ofdesigned operating pressure.)
It's been said that experience is the best teacher. And I supposethat's true. But I say that bought experience is even betterbecause I paid dearly for that screw-up. I suffered the embarrassmentof having my backside chewed out in front of my firemen plus being threatenedwith a captain's mast.
So that near-disaster was a major learning experience for me. Yearslater, after I had achieved senior petty officer ratings, I made it a rulethat my boilermen were not to shift or "tinker with" any machinery whenwe were alongside another ship or maneuvering in restricted waters. And I like to think that it was my enforcement of that rule that kept mefrom embarrassing any of my chief engineers because I can't remember ever"losing the load" during highlines or special sea details.
Richard"Ozzie" Osburn BTCM 11-18-2002
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