50 Years Ago Today - Mux heads home from Gitmo for the first time!
(Excerpt from “The Last Gun Ship - History of USS Mullinnix DD-944” - A Historical Novel By Frank A. Wood)
Graduation day, 13 June 1958. Shakedown completed, behind them, never again. “Halle-fuckin’-lujah! Let’s get the fuck out of dodge and haul-ass home!”
With 40,715 gallons NSFO (Navy Special Fuel Oil) safely on board, Mullinnix was underway at 1421 for home – Norfolk, Virginia, in accordance with COMDESLANT Notice 03120, serial 0264, of 17 March 1958. At 1437, the crew gave the Fisherman’s Point Light a collective ‘fuck you’ as they steamed to open water.
The trip home was filled with days of white hot sun that forced heat to rise off the decks, making the horizon look liquid, almost molten, like a painting that was melting. Each evening the sun would set like a molten planet descending into its own smoke. The nights were black, wrinkled in the wind, the Mullinnix bladed by moonlight. She glided through the two and three foot swells like a three dimensional knife through butter. Almost noiseless. The faint whistle of her self-generated 20 knot wind rushing by the ears of the crew, cool to the salt-flecked skin.
Steaming home feels different than other steaming. With water to the horizon in all directions, one would wonder how sailors could tell. They can. An internal compass that all sailors posses alerts the senses that home is forward of the bow and getting closer with each passing minute, with each passing nautical-mile, with each watch stood.
To be continued...
Cheers,
Woody
Graduation day, 13 June 1958. Shakedown completed, behind them, never again. “Halle-fuckin’-lujah! Let’s get the fuck out of dodge and haul-ass home!”
With 40,715 gallons NSFO (Navy Special Fuel Oil) safely on board, Mullinnix was underway at 1421 for home – Norfolk, Virginia, in accordance with COMDESLANT Notice 03120, serial 0264, of 17 March 1958. At 1437, the crew gave the Fisherman’s Point Light a collective ‘fuck you’ as they steamed to open water.
The trip home was filled with days of white hot sun that forced heat to rise off the decks, making the horizon look liquid, almost molten, like a painting that was melting. Each evening the sun would set like a molten planet descending into its own smoke. The nights were black, wrinkled in the wind, the Mullinnix bladed by moonlight. She glided through the two and three foot swells like a three dimensional knife through butter. Almost noiseless. The faint whistle of her self-generated 20 knot wind rushing by the ears of the crew, cool to the salt-flecked skin.
Steaming home feels different than other steaming. With water to the horizon in all directions, one would wonder how sailors could tell. They can. An internal compass that all sailors posses alerts the senses that home is forward of the bow and getting closer with each passing minute, with each passing nautical-mile, with each watch stood.
To be continued...
Cheers,
Woody
posted by Frank A. Wood at 18:01
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