Sailors on the Navy’s solely active-duty cargo-wrangling unit, at Cheatham Annex in Yorktown, maintain their go-bags packed. They’re prepared — on 72 hours’ discover — to embark on a mission that may take them to the ends of the Earth.
And over the previous few months, they did:
To Iceland for the primary U.S.-led Northern Viking train, drilling on securing the strategic Greenland- Iceland- United Kingdom hole, the excessive Arctic route Russian submarines use.
To Antarctica, unloading provides for this yr’s analysis groups scattered throughout the icy continent.
“It was chilly! … You’re sitting down proper on the asphalt,” mentioned Seaman Stanton Smith, one of many half-dozen sailors who teamed up with Marines to run a refueling operation for Navy planes on anti-submarine patrols.
Although it was summer season in Antarctica when 32 shipmates from Navy Cargo Dealing with Battalion One arrived at McMurdo Station just a few weeks earlier, it didn’t really feel that means.
“It snowed each day we labored … typically, coming in sideways,” mentioned Boatswains Mate 1st Class Robin Westfall, a “hatch captain” chargeable for the evening shift crew of sailors shifting cargo with one of many big cranes on the availability ship MV Ocean Big.
All in all, the Cheatham Annex sailors moved almost 7 million kilos of provides — some 503 items of cargo together with containers, autos, development supplies, electronics tools, and in addition a modular constructing. They loaded the ship with ice cores to return to the U.S. for examine, in addition to trash and different objects the Antarctic researchers not want.
Driving the crane — heftier than these at Cheatham Annex on which she’s been coaching — Seaman Vannessa Carbajal was in fixed walkie-talkie contact with Westfall and the remainder of her crew.
She had a great really feel for compensating for the record and rocking of the MV Ocean Big moored to at ice pier at McMurdo as a result of she might examine to working a land-anchored crane at Cheatham Annex. Westfall and Lt. Elizabeth Flanary fed her common readings on the wind — and there have been loads of instances Flanary needed to name a halt to the operation.
“The solar barely units, however the climate modifications at evening, the wind actually picks up,” she mentioned.
All of them, in the meantime, have been preserving a pointy eye out for the crew of Seamen Dustin Branum and Danny Drayton, the road handlers, down on the Ocean Big’s deck.
Their job was to drag or loosen up on traces connected to the semi-truck-trailer-sized containers to information them into place and to ensure they didn’t begin swinging dangerously within the wind.
It’s a job meaning rigorously watching each other for any signal the motion of a container is attending to be an excessive amount of for a accomplice.
“If I see it’s swinging and he must haul in, I’ll loosen some slack; typically, I’ll have to carry on and he’ll give me some slack,” Branum mentioned.
They needed to do their job by means of that sideways-blowing snow, which made the Ocean Big’s deck slick. “I don’t know what number of instances I fell down,” Drayton mentioned.
The chilly additionally meant the “pineapples” — the twist locks that safe containers to a deck or to 1 one other — froze onerous. After making an attempt every thing else, Drayton wanted a blow torch to thaw the pineapples in order that they could possibly be unlocked.
“Sizzling water simply doesn’t work,” Branum mentioned.
Watching out for each other the way in which the stevedore crew did was key for the sailors operating the refueling operation in Iceland for Northern Viking as properly.
As soon as Smith, Constructionman Austin Leisure and Building Mechanic 2nd Class Michael Provenzano linked all of the 50-foot sections of versatile hose for the fueling station, they rotated by means of all the roles of operating a refueling discipline station.
That’s testing the gasoline, working the pump on the combat-hardened tanker truck, “line-walking” — monitoring meters measuring the stream of gasoline by means of the hose — working the nozzle to fill the P-8 Poseidon patrol planes’ gasoline tanks and standing by with a “hearth bottle” of flame suppressant to douse any spills.
It’s noisy on a flight line, in order that they coordinate with hand indicators: the road walker’s finger pointed up and circling tells the sailor on the pump to step up the tempo. Typically, that’s not the issue; often, the reply to a slowing stream is that the aircraft’s gasoline tank is sort of full, which the sailor on the nozzle can inform by watching a gasoline gauge on the aircraft’s wing.
The nozzle operator’s finger circling — this time, pointing down — can inform the sailor on the pump to sluggish the stream. The road walker can verify if the filters within the hose are the issue by taking a look at a differential stress sensor.
“If it goes over the purple bar, that’s the issue,” Provenzano mentioned.
However they’ll’t get began refueling a aircraft till they’ve examined the gasoline.
“Dry gasoline is nice gasoline,” Provenzano mentioned.
Whereas it was chilly in Iceland, it’s even colder on the altitudes P-8s hit, and if there’s any water within the gasoline, it will probably freeze. The crew assessments for water, in addition to filth and different particles. Additionally they check that there’s sufficient de-icing FSII — pronounced “Fizzy” for gasoline system icing inhibitor.
In the long run, mentioned Seaman Austin Leisure, it’s a must to belief your coaching — the common apply at Cheatham Annex — to do the finicky assessments, even out within the chilly by the facet of a taxiway in Iceland, and get the precise consequence.
After which, the crew’s chief and commanding officer — together with the pilots and squadron commander — need to belief the sailor doing the assessments.
“I’ve been in (the Navy) for 2 years,” Leisure mentioned. “However we prepare quite a bit.”
Dave Ress, 757 247 4535, gown@dailypress.com
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