Trim parties anyone????

[Darrin]

Now that the Tank part of the School of the boat is done instead of talking about Air systems right now, who has the best trim party story?  Sadly because I was a 688 sailor I don't have really any good ones because of the length of them and for us to have one it took the whole crew going aft for ORSE prep.. While I have heard numerous stories of crews not liking the DOOW or OOD and would intentionaly do a trim party to make them WORK to get a good trim and then go to the opposite end of the boat and they would start all over again until they got tired of it or the O'ganger figured out what was going on, personally I would like to hear a couple of good NTINS' with your boats.

Darrin

[Mark Sarsfield]

There are two levels on the modern attack boats, right?  So, I guess you guys were able to move forward and aft without having to pass through the con.

[Darrin]

It was always fun to try to do a trim party on a '88 because the DOOW never got to see us because of the split levels but the damned boat was 360' X 33' so it made it nearly useless unless the whole crew was involved

[JTheotonio]

When you're making a half dozen dives each day - it was easy to set up initial trim and then all the rest of the dives were pretty easy on the diving officer - that is until the boys in Hogan's Alley started moving around.  Get 10 extra guys (about 1500 lbs) moving to After Torpedo Room right before diving - dive the boat and get trimmed.  If they could stay there for a bit - we'd surface after some exercise. and then everyone goes back to After Battery.  Next dive and the trim was off again. But it was hard to always get away with - some officers knew what was going on - but then some didn't.

[Mark Sarsfield]

What kind of retribution was there, usually, if they figured out what you were up to?

[JTheotonio]

We never had any - we had a pretty good Skipper and XO, who enjoyed challenging the younger officers.  Nothing we did would cause serious trouble for the safety of the boat - just fun! It's like throwing Midshipmen over the side when they came aboard for summer duty.

[Darrin]

We were told not to throw our middies overboard no matter how badly they needed it  
Our CO also didn't mind the challenge because it made his DOOW's better at what they were doing and he also knew it would take most of the crew to go forward or aft to make it a good trim party and he wasn't worried about many of us trying to make it happen after we tried to do it a few times and the DOOW only had to move a few hundred gallons fwd or aft to take up for it or he just let the planesman ride the bubble until it was over. We did have a really good DOOW who would let the planesmen zero the planes and then let us tell him where we wanted the water moved too to make our jobs easier, had a lot of respect for him because of that and normally we could zero the bubble within a matter of minutes regardless of which one of us on the planes was having the COW move the water for us.. He did get bored on a ORSE prep cleanup once and put us in "single stick" and had the COW get up and clean along with the Helmsman (out board station had full control of the planes and rudder) The CO about flipped out when he saw it but realized we were still safe and we were going by the book for the evolution (COW stood behind his chair just in case anything happened) and he thought it was funny after a bit and ordered a full bell and then started doing angles and dangles with us and then started doing snap rolls right and left to see how far he could push his boat in single stick operations. After a couple of minutes of fun the COB came up and asked polietly what the hell was going on because his guys were aft cleaning and we were messing them up and when he saw the CO with a huge smile on his face and the outboard planesmen finally starting to get worried about loosing a little bit depth control while on a full bell because the CO had been threatening to run a flank bell for the fun of it just to see how far he could go. After that watch I was moved to the COB's watch (06-12) and he would let me go back to the QMC's section when he would bitch enough to make it happen, while I wasn't the manuvering watch Helmsman it was fun for a while to be there for Battle stations (until I got moved to the fire control tracking party) When I left the boat there were very few if any still qualified to run single stick operations and only 1 or 2 of us were authorized to be single stick at a full bell.

[Mark Sarsfield]

That's cool.  Keep the stories coming. 

[emeacho]

We did a trim party for every new diving officer trainee.  The 632 was built for it.  about 15-20 of us would storm aft, sit in shaft alley for a few minutes waiting for the boat to be trimmed up, then we'd run forward through middle level missile, past crew's mess and up into the torpedo room.  We'd pause again for a few minutes, then head aft again.  Usually, after the boat was trimmed we'd run forward through upper missile, then the control room heading forward so the poor diving officer trainee would know he'd been had.  Sure had that poor trim pump wound up!   

[JTheotonio]

Must be nice to have lived in a split-level condo!  That sounds like fun