This second tour of shore duty ran the regular three years.  FAAWTC was a school teaching various forms of CIC team training.  Early on I was, more or less, the AN/SPS-37 and 29 guy in this environment.  We did have an AN/SPS-30 that, when it worked, did very well.  Like the SPIZ-8 (Corry) the antenna still had problems.  There was also some other stuff that was "work in progress" which wasn't my thing.

In November, we were closing the training syllabus for the holidays and for the long haul equipment maintenance schedule; this is the time that the heavy stuff gets fixed - you know - that which you've held together with chewing gum and baling wire.  On the 22nd I was knee deep into the 37 modulator assembly when the word was passed that President Kennedy had been shot.  Disbelief, of course.  Not only mine but the others gathered in the lounge watching TV.  I was no particular Kennedy fan, but you just don't shoot the President of the United States!

As electronics maintenance chief, I got to sign the 1250s for all repair parts and other needs.  These would come to me in batches ... a few here and there and then 15 - 20 or more.  Checking each one and querying the need was necessary to keep a harness on expenditures.  One day a tech suggested that "someone" might try to get something past me.  I said something like "No way, MaGoo".  Well, a few weeks later, during a particularly busy week, I was checking these things kind of fast and ... ZAP!  He got me - a requisition for a 1965 Ford station wagon - stock number and all.  I never saw it.  Well, it was nice of him, and the others who knew it was going down, to keep it among ourselves in the shop, showing it to me there with the inevitable "I told you so" rather than letting Bob Braund catch the 1250 up front.

I made E-8 and went "up front" - to the office now with the overall maintenance responsibility of the division which, actually, was made up of radar and communications ETs and a group of Tradevmen, these being the specialized techs for the training devices which made the CIC mockups "sing".  Instructors would crank in certain information and the system electro-mechanical "marvels" would drive bogus air and surface contacts around the various radar repeaters in the mock-ups.  Just like the real thing - I guess.

Labor Day weekend, 1966 I went back to sea - my last tour ... and a real joy it was.

There were:

CWO3 Opie Bittle:  A cool, "country boy" type who was gentle mostly, but did know how and when to "cloud up and rain".  A fine man and officer.  On occasion I run into him at the Exchange or somewhere.

ETCS Bob Braund:  Division Chief and keeper of the repair parts world.  A real "John J. Squared Away" fellow - neat, precise and always a help.

ET3 Moton:  Somewhere along the line I must have done (or said) something right.  One day Moton told me that I had been of some help to him in some way related to his career and other life things.  He never amplified so I have no idea of the circumstances.  It was nice though to know that something was right with the world.

Mr. Glen Perkins:  A Tech Rep assigned to some new training devices.  Glen was a golfer - well not JUST a golfer.  He said that he hit a thousand balls a day to stay in shape.  He was a professional amateur - wouldn't turn pro but did every amateur meet he could.  My golf was a meter needle thickness off zero.  I had tried a few rounds at the Laguna Madre course in Corpus Christi with Red Lyle, but never broke a hundred - and wasn't a regular player.  Well, during one day of kibbitzing - somehow - Glen and I agreed on a tee time ... a real coup for me of course since Glen just didn't play golf, he worked at it passionately.  Well, you've heard how one party gives the other all the sticks and uses only the other party's commanded club.  I had the bag full, I gave Glen the sand wedge ... and we started down the Bow Creek course.  Well, you already know the outcome - somehow I tied one hole and got beat to death by that wedge the other seventeen.  This guy drove off the tee down the middle 200 plus yards at a time and did 125/150 in between.  Then he'd turn the wedge around and putt my eyes out.  Sure gave him the wrong club.  But I did enjoy the day.

Glen passed a few years back.

USN Years
USS Conyngham DDG-17