The Decommissioning of the
USS Francis Scot Key SSBN 657
The Key was decommissioned in Hawaii on September 2nd
1993. There were few former shipmates in attendance and the ceremony was a
rather low key affair. The men that served the Key in her last days have
submitted information on those final days and you can read their stories
below. If you were part of the decommissioning process at any point and
would like to add some material to this section, please send it to Russ at
ssbn657@ comcast.net.
Pictures of the Key arriving in Hawaii for decommissioning.
The below newspaper article announces the arrival of the Key in
Hawaii for decommissioning.
Memories
of De-Comm submitted by Ples Reynolds - Missile Tech 90 - 93 (July 8,
2008)
The
fun of decomm had to be lived to be appreciated. I’m kind of thinking it was
like Precomm. What do I remember about it besides all the junk that kept being
pulled out of nooks and crannies. You could tell it had been around for a long
time and 30 years of sailors hiding stuff and forgetting about it. Well we found
it. The stash of adult magazines from the late 70’s early 80’s we found in
the Lower Level Missile Compartment while pulling gas generators (the devices
used to launch the missiles from the tube) I think tops the list for me.
My
top 20 decomm memories are:
1)
MT3 Duprel and others spending hours with a hammer and chisel to break free the
screws holding the deck plates down in Middle Level Missile aft so we could
offload the gas generators. Of course we could not just break the screws because
the plates had to go back down so you had to sit there and hammer the screws
around with a chisel until they came out.
2)
Once the missiles were offloaded, filling the missile tubes up with potable
water so we could be heavy enough to submerge. We got to go swimming in
the tubes for a little while. Of course when we got to Hawaii and were tied up
at the pier we only had one little dinky pump to get the water back out of those
tubes and you had to keep the pump close to the water level so we had a rope
tied to it so we could lower the pump down into the tube as the water level
decreased. And Sub Pac told us the water was contaminated so we had to pump it
into the sewer system on the pier. But after a couple of tubes it backed up and
dumped into the harbor anyway. All this hassle over the water and possible eco
damage but when I went to get rid of 50 (5 gallon) cans of termaline grease they
told me to just throw it in the dumpster. Figure that one out.
3)
The trip through the canal, and the Panamanians who kept trying to come onboard
to handle lines and the Capt kept kicking them off.
4)
The hope by most of the crew that since we were ahead of schedule after the
canal transit that the Capt would drop below the equator for a minute. No such
luck.
5)
The day we pulled in to port and we surfaced miles out, the captain had a
working party from all compartments dumping every haz-mat chemical they could
find overboard and the OOD screaming because all the bags were not weighted down
enough and some were floating.
6)
Dumping 30 years of TDU weights over the side while tied up to the pier. Some of
those things had not been moved in so long 8 or 9 of them would be rusted
together and you had to get the whole thing up the hatch and roll them
overboard.
7)
I was the Repair Parts Petty Officer and one day I went to visit one of the fast
attacks because I was trying to get rid of tools. I told them to come by in a
couple of days but they showed up the next day while I was off the boat. They
took everything in the missile compartment that looked like a tool even the
torque wrenches that I was supposed to send back to SPO. The FTB1 was convinced
I had made some kind of deal with the SSN crew and kept trying to find out what
they gave me for the tools. Of course somehow I ended up being responsible for
all the torque wrenches on the boat and shipped them all back by dumping them in
a shipping crate. No wrapping, no packaging just one big pile of wrenches in a
box.
8)
While in Hawaii, living in barracks that were built in the 40’s and had bullet
holes in the wall from the Japanese attack (it used to be a hospital back then).
But we had this big porch that went around the whole barracks and the one MT who
got so drunk one night and decided to ride his bike on the breeze way and ran
into the stairs going up to the second floor. He got up and went to bed (he had
the top bunk) the next morning his knee was swollen up like a watermelon. He had
shattered his kneecap the night before and did not feel it. Updated
11/15/2010 From Steve Lawrence: I have just found your site and it is
great. Brings back a lot of old memories. I am the one in the
decom stories that was the MT that shattered his knee at the barracks in Pearl
Harbor, number 8 in the top 20. What a lot of crazy fun we had during that
time.
9)
Using a sledgehammer to bust up every locker on the Key. The recreation
committee sold the aluminum and used to money to throw parties almost daily and
buy all kinds of junk for the crew as souvenirs. They had all this money and the
crew was getting smaller almost daily and of course they could not have any
money at the end so they just spent it on anything and everything. We had
hamburger and beer parties at the barracks almost daily. They paid for us to go
to this place called the Royal Hawaiian, it was a great big pig roast, or when
they underwrote the cost for anybody who wanted to take scuba lessons.
10)
Buying a bike at the navy exchange and going off base for the first time on it
and when I came back the guards told me I had to register it before I could ride
it back on the base so I had to walk 4 miles back to the barracks to get a
receipt and then walk back so I could get my bike back on base.
11)
When you were on duty when we were in dry dock they would send somebody to the
mess hall to get your food. You told them what you wanted, gave them the money
and they got it. But we would always get burritos because you got to make it and
it was only like $1.00 for one but after you made it, the thing was the size of
loaf of bread.
12)
Having to sit through endless hours of safety training for the dry dock and the
one seaman who kept failing the tests you had to take at the end.
13)
After the missile division went bye-bye I was moved to the supply dept. because
I was qualified as a duty storekeeper and there was only 2 SK’s onboard and
they wanted to go to 1 day on, 2 days off like the rest of the crew, which I
liked because it meant I did not have to stand any watches just once every three
days spend the night on our barge in case somebody needed a part. But the best
part was we had a huge office that nobody to could get into. So we had the
stereo system out of the wardroom set up in there and you could listen to music
and sleep in the office instead of down in crews berthing.
14)
Getting our hard hats, which looked just like everybody else’s onboard the
sub. So me and one of the SK’s got those little plastic sticky letters and put
out names on the back of the hard hat. We got chewed out over that because it
was unauthorized but the next day the XO wanted us to order more letters so he
could do his hard hat like that, then the chiefs wanted it done.
15)
The MT who shall remain nameless who went to get a tattoo and passed out in the
chair while getting it (he was sober, not drunk).
16)
The A-Ganger who got banned from the topside watch because he had tattoos all
down his arms and it did not “Look Military”.
17)
The chief who popped positive for opium during a drug test, they kept testing
him until he was clean. Told us it was because he had a poppy seed bagel the
morning of the first test.
18)
Watching the dock workers take everything not welded down as a souvenir, while
we kept being told to not take anything, yeah right.
19)
The 2 or 3 weeks we had to keep standing MCRP (Missile Compartment Roving
Patrol) after we got Hawaii because the Weps would not let us secure it. We just
had to walk around the compartment with a guard belt on and our guard orders in
our pocket. No logs to take, nothing running in the compartment. Finally the
below-decks watch took over the fire watch.
20)
Watching them cut huge holes in the Key to get the equipment out. It would take
hours for them to cut through the HY-80. I had a piece of the hull but it
disappeared out of my sea bag while I was flying back to Atlanta. So somewhere
out there an airport worker has a piece of the Key.
I
never thought I would - but I do miss those days sometimes. Of course the new
Navy has made those the good old days. When I got to my new sub USS Nebraska
SSBN 739 (G) I could not believe the differences between the two boats. Not the
make of the subs or size but the way the crew acted toward each other.
On the Key no matter the personal problems I may have had with any of the
other MT’s, I always watched their back and they watched mine but the new
boats seemed to be all politics and seeing how many times you could screw over
the other guys to help you get ahead or look better to the Captain and that was
one of the reasons I left when my time was up instead of staying like I wanted
to initially.
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