a Medal of Honor winner, and someone hard to argue with. In any case, all the members of
the INSURV Board are typically strong willed and hard to please. I was later to learn that the INSURV board is so experienced in inspection that its members arrive at the inspection site with discrepancy cards already filled out and use the inspection as a way to eliminate cards. After completing their inspection, the INSURV Board presentsa list of discrepancies to the ships company, the shipyard, and presumably, up the chain of command. The most serious deficiencies appear with two stars (**). The shipyard, in our case Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, must correct all ** discrepancies before the ship can go to sea.
Initial INSURV Trials Incident. I remember one incident that occurred during the initial INSURV trial when the Leahy was coming out of Philadelphia. A certain inspector, LCDR Piersall, was entering the forward fireroom when he slipped on the ladder and fell down into the fireroom, right on his back. He was in significant pain and took out his frustration on a discrepancy card, which he appropriately filled out and marked with a ** - “fireroom ladders slippery”. Thus, the USS Leahy could not go to sea until the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard figured out a way to make the fireroom ladders unslippery. During the following weeks the shipyard tried various schemes to make the ladders Piersall-proof. Because the discrepancy never came up again, I assume the shipyard must have, indeed, succeeded in smearing some mysterious substance on the ladders that was sticky enough to enable the ship to safely go to sea.
Years later, I met Captain Piersall when he was a speaker at a Naval Reserve meeting. He was serving as a Program Manager at the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA). I reminded him of the Leahy ladder incident. He was still adamant that he had broken his back on the Leahy and I am convinced that he would have reissued the discrepancy card right then and there if he could have. Incidentally, he was a good speaker and a respected program manager -- he just didn’t get along with those fireroom ladders.
Follow-on INSURV Inspection. In late 1968 or in early 1969, the INSURV Board returned to check up on the status of deficiencies and to see if anything new had cropped up. By this time, we had changed homeport to Norfolk, and the local INSURV Sub-board did the inspection, while we were at sea. Unlike the first inspection, which was of the shipyard, we viewed this one as an inspection as of us and of what we had accomplished, or caused to be accomplished, in the last few months.
One of the inspectors insisted on checking out the interior of the forward deaerating feed tank, also called a “DFT” or a “DA tank”. All were aware that in order to do that we had to take the forward boilers, 1A and 1B, out of commission. This meant that we would have to steam cross-connected, using boilers 2A and 2B, both in the after fireroom. This method of steaming was not normally recommended because it greatly reduced the redundancy inherent in the engineering plant design. But we did it, and a few hours later we had a sudden loss of steam pressure on 2B boiler. The BTs were able to shut it down in a timely fashion and otherwise handled the casualty professionally. The loss of steam pressure, however, had caused a momentary loss of power. The distilling plant pumps then tripped off, and we salted up the distilling plant drains and ultimately 2A boiler. So there we were, at sea on one salty boiler, and it would have to remain that way for some time because it would take lots of time to put the forward DA tank back together and it would take a day for 2B boiler to cool down enough to enter and inspect - before we could even think about a repair.
Meanwhile, the INSURV sub-board inspector was observing all of this, including the “debate” I was having with BTCS McCoy on what to do with the salty boiler. My initial reaction was to give the boiler a continuous surface blow and clean out the boiler all at once to the degree one could do that. Chief McCoy wanted to take a more conservative approach - to surface blow, then chemically treat, measure salinity, and continue to re-blow, re-treat, and re-measure until we got the boiler water within limits. The Chief Engineer opted for the conservative approach - the Chief’s way - and we got the boiler back within limits in about a day. Inspection of 2B boiler showed that it had a ruptured tube and we had no way to fix it at sea. (I can’t remember whether a yardbird had left his wrench in the tube nest, or whether we ever determined the cause of the rupture). I wish I had a nickel for everyone who came down to the fireroom and climbed in the boiler to see the ruptured tube.
We were heading back into Norfolk on one boiler. During the night before we got into Norfolk, we passed through a Soviet fleet (I think it was a fishing fleet, maybe somebody else remembers). To the outside world everything looked fine. To those of us in engineering, however, and to anyone standing a bridge watch, we were really just limping along. We all had fears of losing 2A boiler and of being adrift. From talking to LCDR Dachos , the Chief Engineer, I know he was extremely uncomfortable with that entire situation.
The INSURV Board did not hold the casualty against us and, if I remember correctly, we got an outstanding rating in engineering. We all had a wonderful time and lived happily ever after.........
