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- October 1989
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October 1989
ABOUT OUR COVER
The USS PELELIU LHA-5, one of the latest and most modern of our fighting ships in our modern Navy.
This 40,000 ton behemoth, manned by a crew of 846 men, 6 women and 55 officers, is a small city in itself. Manned, ready for the unexpected on a 24-hour basis, it is a formi-dable deterrant to hostile action but a mighty force for peace.
Read Al Adams story of his trip on this mighty ship, appearing on page 15.
A CLUB NEWS OCTOBER 1989
TABLE OF CONTENTS
E PAGE
3 PRISTINE ADVENTURE by Ted Williams #999 Our October Feature Story
N 7 YUKON VOYAGE - Part 3 - by Dave Dahl #993 A visit with two trapper families.
T10 WE HEARD FROM . .. . Jim Clements, Max
Hurlbut and Herman Jesson
ER NATURE? by Keith Young #565
U You will remember this program!!
14 JAPANESE PRISON CAMPS - A short report as a follow-up on two Thursday nights
R programs by Frank Mente and Ted Wil- iams on June 22 and July 20.
15 A POWERFUL PEACE by Al Adams #688
E An inside look at the USS PELELIU LHA-5.
R SPECIAL FEATURES
6 Nautical Lore 6 Nellie Bly
9 About manuscripts 10 (Photo) Channing Clark
S 18 A Word of Praise and Paul MacCready
of Peter Klika 20 Figure Head
Page 1
ADVENCI IEEC*.V 0TKURV Nruo
(usPs 389-310)
THE ADVENTURERS CLUB NEWS is the Official Publication of the Adven-turers Club of Los Angeles, California. Subscription: $15.00 year.
PUBLISHER - Frank Haigler #825 EDITOR - Robert Williams #905
§
PRESIDENT FIRST VICE PRESIDENT SECOND VICE PRESIDENT SECRETARY TREASURER PAST PRESIDENT
DIRECTOR - Bil Brown #708 DIRECTOR - Bob Sechrist #828 DIRECTOR - Sven Wahiroos #978
Frank Haigler #825 Pierre Odier #988 David Dahl #993
David Linehan #977 Keith Chase #664 Alan Siebert #932
DIRECTOR - Bruce Meyers #973 DIRECTOR - Bob Sandwick #909 DIRECTOR - Milt Valois #974
§
THE ADVENTURERS CLUB NEWS (USPS 389-310) is published monthly by The Adventurers Club, P. 0. Box 15791, Los Angeles, Calif. 90015
POSTMASTER: Send address changes to P. 0. Box 15791, Los Angeles California, 90015.
Manuscripts and other items intended for publication by the members of the
Club are to be considered the opinions of the author and not necessarily those of
The Adventurers Club. All manuscripts should be sent to the Publication Office,
1735 Avalon Bay Road, Lake Havasu City, Arizona 86403. Phone is 1-602-453_3996.
Office hours are from 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM. Lead time for publication is a minimum
of three months. Adventure stories, human interest stories, or other items sub-
mitted by the author, along with any photographs, are always welcome.
Page 2 Adventurers Club News
OUR OCTOBER FEATURE STORY
Pristine Adventure BY TED R. WILLIAMS #999
REMEMBER WHEN?' .....This inter-esting little short story tells of an adventure of a different kind. Have you been in Califor-nia since 1935? If so you will recognize some familiar things in Ted's story.
§
Southern California, of the 1930's, was a far cry from the hustle and bustle of today. The sky was clear of smog, except when the dread Santa Ana's blew and a shroud of dust obliterated the sun. Ancient historical scribes dubbed the Santa Aria valley as "The Valley Of The Smoke". White sand beaches were as bare of buildings as a modern girl' s bathing suit is of cloth.
Seventy five years of the "flew civilization" has seen the railroads encroach upon the wild mustard fields and the dirt roads that had crisscrossed the open fields. Orange, Fullerton, "Goat Hill" (Costa Mesa) and Brea were burgeoning around the
County seat of Santa Ana. Life was a comfortable mixture of rural development and city bus-iness expansion. Citrus groves gobbled up virgin fields and replaced the grapes and walnuts dying from worms and blight. And life was good!
Men like Glenn Martin lived here where he built his first airplane. The Martin brothers, Eddie, Johnie and Floyd (no re-lation) were pioneer aviators and the movie crowd roamed the shores of Balboa Peninsula. Sum-mer saw the open stretches green with lima beans while toiling farmers scurried here and there. Fall came and the browns of dry-ing vegetation battled herds of threshers bent on gleaning the crops.
These great and wondrous ma-chines, flanked by mule drawn wagons, were an adventure in themselves. Up to a hundred men staffed these behemoth "statio-nary rigs" which were mobile communities for sixty odd days.
October 1989 Page 3
PRISTINE ADVENTURE
Belt driven by tractors, they belched dust and chaff into blue skies and piles of hundred pound sacks grew around them, but not one highrise marred the view.
Orange County Airport was a dirt field on Lane Road, given to the county by the late Mr. J. I. Irvine owner of the sprawling ranch bearing his name. Eddie Martin's Airport was one mile north at the corner of Lane and Newport Avenue where this farm-boy tookhis first flying lesson at age fourteen. The year was 1935 and Santa Ana was boasting a population of forty thousand by the year 1960.
In 1937 Victor McLaughlan, the popular and robust movie actor, had formed a civilian air corps" out of his well-known "Light Horse" equestrian team which also included an elite motorcycle cadre mounted on black and white Harley David-sons. Roy Sheverton was the Lt. Col. who commanded the "squad-ron" based at Orange County Air port. Ground and flight school filled the hours of voluntary members like me. Club and civic activities, traffic control and some air search missions rounded out the training goals.
Yachts were few and quite luxurious in Balboa Bay and the house where we spent summer days stood almost lonely near the
once famous Rendezvous Ballroom It was a solitary drive on the three-lane Alternate 101 to Ca-pistrano and the red tiled hou-ses of San Clemente. San Onofre Beach was a paddle-board para-dise and nuclear energy a vision in the minds at Cal-Tech.
Knotts Berry Farm was a produce stand and Mickey Mouse was only a cartoon!
Trabuco Canyon was a remote and pristine refuge for the beautiful California oaks while dreams of silver lodes kept Mo-jeska residents enthralled. An undarnmed SantaAna River coursed gleaming, through the valley threatening the lowlands with an annual inundation. Knott's Berry Farm was a fruit stand and Mickey Mouse a cartoon. And life was good in the county.
To the west, Los Angeles clawed its insidious way toward Coyote Creek while dairies and mushroom cellars fringed Imper-ial Boulevard. LAX was known as Mines Field and Hollywood was truly a 'Tinsel Town' linked to neighboring cities by "The Yel-low Cars". Victor McLaughlan's Club House stood on the banks of the river with its polo grounds dominating the scene. The "Big Red Cars" linked the two county seats and the U.S. Government was not Convinced that Orange County truly exis-
Page 4 Adventurers Club News
PRISTINE ADVENTURE
ted. Manchester/Firestone had the
dubious moniker, "Manslaughter" Blvd. Long Beach sported the Fun Zone Pike and battle ships loomed gray and ominous in the harbor. A multi-millionaire sponsored world tours for Sea Scouts on his seagoing yacht, Stranger. The air was clean and life was good inthe County!
On December 7, 1941, the Ja-panese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor instituted the greatest series of human adventures ever imagined. The long years of war and a billion stories, ended with the thunder of unspeakable force over Nagasaki. This also kindled the demise of paradise!
Farm boys, ghetto dwellers and college graduates, from ev-ery corner of America, began an insidious migration to the land of milk and honey. The greatest building boom of all time grip-ped the San Fernando Valley and Spread south into the verdant green orange groves of sleepy little towns like Anaheim, Ful-lerton, Brea, Garden Grove and Huntington Beach.
The Santa Ana Freeway repla-ced Manchester and giant yellow machines churned the fertile Soil while mankind buried a r-denspot under tons of asphalt and cement. The invasion was slow at first, picking up the
pace with the growth of air tra-vel, industry and tourism. Mis-guided Federal policy flooded the area with refugees. Poli- ticians raped the citizens and stole their sanity and their money. Corrupt corporations filched serenity and labor while plotting moves to foreign lands.
Our former enemy inundated the market with new and innova-tive products, automobiles and financing, gleaned from profits protected by Federal mandate. Mid-eastern nations conspired against an ever more dependent oil industry and bilked a cap-tive society of a treasure that would ransom all the kings of history,.
Mired in a sewer of smog, se-duced by promises of the good life, shackled in the clutches of money lenders, we plod on. Never again will a man be able to survive by his own devices or prosper free from the greed of government. I look back upon a past luxury that cannot be purchased by all the billion- aires combined. I have seen a phenomenon that makes the buil-ding of the great pyramids no more than mere child's play in a sand box.
The ultimate adventure was and is here, where the past was glorious and the future ambiva- lent. Like the dinosaur, five (Concluded on the next page)
October 1989 Page 5
NAUTICAL LORE by Al A. Adams
A recent question encouraged this response. It was regarding the crow's nest--a lookout sta-tion usually high on the fore-mast, usually cylindrical in
form for the convenience and protection of the lookout who would ride there. But it was more than that.
Actually, it was in the wha-ling and exploring vessels that the crow was an essential aid to navigation. The crows were caged and kept on board to aid the navigator. They were land-lubbing birds and when in poor visibility, with a need to know, the navigator would take a crow aloft to the crow's nest and release it. The crow would in-variably fly toward land giving the navigator a course to plot and thus be an aid to him in dead reckoning.
A.A.A.
EMERGENCY CLUB PHONE NUMBER on Thursday nights only
1-818-405-7019
PRISTINE ADVENTURE concluded
cent coffee and the big game hunter, my day lives only as a memory and the annals of time devour even those. And life has been good to me!
Ted R. Williams #999
NELLIE BLY - 1889
On November 14, 1889, Nellie Bly, a reporter for Joseph Pul-itzer's New York World, set out on an adventure that seems re-markable even today, almost one hundred years to the day later. Her goal: to beat Jules Verne's story of Phineas Fogg's circum-navigation of the globe in 80 days.
She travelled light, her lug-gage consisted of a small suit-case and a bulging shoulder lag.
She set out for England by steamer. From there she crossed the Channel to France where she interviewed Jules Verne. From France her itinerary took her by train to Brindisi, Italy. The remainder of the voyage was by a succession of ships--through the Suez to Ceylon, thence to Singapore, Hong Kong, Yokohama, and the Golden Gate. The last leg of the trip from San Fran-cisco to New York was by a spe-cial train.
Like all trips, there were problems. The train to Brin- disi was two hours late. The ship thru the Suez waited. The Pacific crossing was Slowed by bad storms. And the railroad from San Francisco to the East was blocked by snow. But luck was with her. She arrived home in 72 days having beaten Phjn eas Fogg's trip by eight days, a remarkable feat!
Page 6 Adventurers Club News
Civilization out there in the wilds of the Canadian Northwest, and two very
interesting trapper families.....
Yukon Vojcxge by Dave Dahl #993
Part 3
After getting back on the river for a day or two, we had our most interesting experience of the trip. We came upon two trapper families living in this incredibly remote valley of the Yukon. The heads of the fami- lies were named Lee and Bud. They were extremely hospitable folks and we greatly enjoyed visiting with them.
The trappers had built a lit-tle settlement of cabins, where a small creek joined the MacMil-lan River. After seeing largely abandoned cabins in the past we thought their settlement looked like Shangri-La. They had a few cabins to sleep in, with a sep-arate dining cabin, meat/fur storage cabin, work cabin, and cold storage cellar. The cabins were of typical log and sod roof Construction, but had been fi-nished very nicely inside.
Most of the cabins had sky-lights made with multiple sheets Of plastic. These provided good lighting in the summer and were insulated well enough for win-
ter. The cabins were made en- tirely of pegged construction because it is so difficult and expensive to get nails into the remote back country.
The dining cabin was a marvel of ingenuity. Although it would take too long to describe all of the interesting features, Tom and I were most impressed with the meat drying setup. The trappers had built a stove in the basement out of an old fuel drum they had somehow acquired. Above it they had built anenor-mous set of drying racks in a large closet-like cabinet. They told us that they could dry all of the meat from a large bull moose in about a week!
The trappers offered us some dried moose and we found it quite tasty, although it does take a bit of time to soften after you pop a piece into your mouth. Another delicious offer-ing was some fresh vegetables. The trappers had planted two substantial vegetable gardens and, despite the short Yukon growing season, were getting
October 1989 Page 7
Yukon Voyage
some great results. As with our outfitters' absence of 'bear problems" they were not encoun-tering any 'varmint problems'. If a varmint molested their gar-den, the trappers simply shot it and added the meat to their evening stew. No varmint prob-lems!
The trappers generate very little cash income from their hard work and must be largely self-sufficient. It is miracu-lous what you can do when there is no alternative and you really apply yourself to a task.
With regard to trapping, ev-ery winter Lee and Bud showshoe over 1,000 miles each on their trap lines. The air temperature is frequently twenty to thirty degrees below zero and can drop to over fifty below when they get a 'cold snap' from an influx or arctic air. To survive these conditions, they must have a well-cut network of trails and a small line cabin every six to eight miles. Each cabin has a small fireplace set with kind-ling ready to light. Under the most extreme conditions a trap-per might not have the energy to cut kindling after fighting through fifty-below weather to get to the cabin.
The trappers said that our
suggestion of using heavy-duty cross-country skis instead of snowshoes might speed their tra-vel on the trap lines. Unfortu-nately they don't have the cash to buy such gear. I am attemp-ting to secure a donation from aski company. These folks could certainly provide a manufactur-er with a good long-term dura-bility test under the severest conditions.
The trappers spend the Summer and Fall clearing line trails, building small line cabins, do-ing maintenance work, hunting, and fishing. One summer main- tenance chore is repairing and building snowshoes. Commercial snowshoes are too expensive and too weak. The trappers construct their own snowshoes from birch saplings and moosehide. They are extremely sturdy.
Bud and Lee gave us some Griz pointers worth noting. We al- ready knew how to distinguish Griz tracks from those of black bear by the distance of the claw points from the pads. Even a small Griz will have substanti-ally longer claws than a larger black bear. In addition to their greater body weight, the Griz's longer claws are a factor in limiting its tree Climbing ability. The longer claws are more effective on fish and game but tougher to drive into a tree trunk.
Page 8 Adventurers Club News
They told us to stay off beaches, avoid bringing smelly meat -and never touch half-buried animal carcasses!
One obvious tip to remember River. Since we had endured a is to stay off of beaches where day of cold, wind-driven drizzle there are lots of Griz tracks to reach the trappers, the hot and trails. The bears favor meal really lifted our spirits. certain beaches for fishing and
§ there's no sense in camping there as there are plenty of Next month: Two very interes- other beaches. Another pointer ting stories told by the trap- is to avoid carrying large pack- pers. One, an encounter Bud had ages of smelly meats like sau- with Old Ephraim the Griz and a sage or bacon. You can never bull moose. The other, an old adequately reseal them once you trapper hunts a moose with a 22 open them. The locals either rifle! leave such foods behind or car- ry one-serving packages and burn ABOUT MANUSCRIPTS the containers.
A less obvious bit of advice concerns animal carcasses. The trappers told us that one peri-odically encounters a partially buried animal carcass along the river. Your best course of ac-tion is to get into your canoe and paddle vigorously. A well-fed Griz will sometimes bury part of its kill for later. When it returns hungry the Griz will take violent exception to your presence at its food cache.
After swapping stories with the trappers, they invited us to stay for dinner. We had some delicious moose soup, fresh ve-getables, and some fresh-baked bread. Best of all, they had some fresh preserves made from the wild berries that grow in abundance along the MacMillan
The supply of manuscripts ar-riving at our publication office is most heartening. Keep 'em coming, though. Here's some tips for you in preparing copy:
1) If possible, type your manu-script but hand-written copy is also acceptable. 2) Double space between each line (easier to read!). 3) If you use a computer, shut off the right-hand margin justi-fication key. 4) Make your corrections right on the copy, by hand. 5) If possible, limit your copy to 6 to 8 typed pages. This is enough for 3 magazine pages. 6) Your story will run sometime after 2 to 3 months as issues are planned that far in advance.
Thanks. Bob Williams, Editor
October 1989 Page 9
Paul MacCready #959, and Capt. Channing Clark #897, in front of the stainless
steel Fleetwing Seabird, model 401-1.
SOME CHANGES OF ADDRESS FOR YOUR ROSTER
Mason L. Armstrong 964 Little Valley Road Roseburg, OR 97470
(Old) 7844 Melva Street Downey, CA 90242
WhLhoe. Yukon Aug. 12 We have compe-ted about 200
mJJe.4 o4 wJdvrne.-6,6 zivvLs on the 13Aq Samon and Yukon R-Lv.5. We caught a 15-i?6. 4amon and Tom and 1 ate it in oniJ two meats. (-lope to have <some good oLde-o.
Dave Daht #993
Sea-t-te, Aug. 14 In memo/uf oç OWL depa&.ted
tend.... Max Huibu #880 (Attached to Max's card was this note
about a former member: "In 1969, the
Rev. Fred W. DeMara, the hard-working
pastor of San Juan Baptist church in
Friday Harbor, turned out to be none
other than Ferdinand Waldo DeMara,
"The Great Impostor" famed for posing
in the past as a psychology professor
a Trappist monk, an assistant prison
warden, and a surgeon".) Ed.
Page 10 Adventurers Club News
KEITH'S KALEIDESCOPE--
Mother Nature? by Keith Young t565
Do YOU REMEMBER THIS PROGRAM??
Mother Nature? Mother, in- deed! A red-fanged, merciless harridan is what she really is. And please don't try totake her part until you've either seen her in the raw, or have, your-self, suffered at her hands. Nothing, but nothing, could be more cruel than so-called Mother Nature, not even the architects of the Holocaust. Or Viad the Impaler. Or "Good Old Uncle Joe." Or Pol Pot. You name him. Mother Nature's got him beat a mile. And yet, in spite of what I've just said, there is a dif-ference. Nature, if the truth is known, is neither cruel nor humane.
A better word might be neu- tral. She does, however, set rather high standards. And woe betide those who do not measure up. Don't ever expect Mother Nature to come at your bidding to your rescue; you've got to outwit the old bitch. And this we do through technology---warm houses, water reservoirs, cul-tivated crops, pressure suits on moon-walkers, G-suitscn Mach
2 pilots and so on in a million other clever ways. However, let the house collapse (termites, fire, hurricanes or whatever), the crops fail, the pressure suit develop a leak, or the G-suit, and you'll pretty smartly find out just how little Mother Nature herself cares how you fare. You may well die cursing her.
But why all this sudden bad-mouthing of nature? Well, it's like this. Did any of you hap-pen to catch that column of Jack Smith's in the L.A. Times when he attempted to defend himself for not intervening and rescuing a bee caught in a spider web and about to be first trussed, then killed and devoured by a pre-sumably hungry spider?
Jack, in writing about the difficulty he had in ignoring the frantic buzzing of the doomed bee, revealed a squeamish side which I had not heretofore sus- pected. I mean, among other things, he was a uniformed mem-ber of the armed forces during a war, and he's spent time in
October 1989 Page 11
Mother Nature Baja California, somewhat south of Teejay. Anyway, instead of releasing the bee--he claims he was afraid he might damage its wings--he allowed the spider to make a meal of it.
Just as well, perhaps, that Jack had not been present at a long ago meeting of the Adven-turers Club -- I think we were still quartered over on W. 12th Street -- when we sat through a program titled, not inaptly, "Murder In My Backyard". For sheer savagery, and outside of war itself, I've not seen any-thing to match it, though some of the Nature programs on PBS come close sometimes. But what this show consisted of was re-presented to us as a series of out-takes from some of those Disney specials that were being released round that time. "The Living Desert" is one I remember and appreciate both for the ex-cellene of its photography and for the infinite patience of the photographer(s).
However, while the animal and reptile stars of "The Living Desert" were, with certain ex-ceptions, photographed life size these out-takes presented to us at that memorable meeting of our club were almost entirely mac-rophotographed. That is to say, they were super magnified on the screen, the shots almost invar-
iably being close-ups. For ex- ample, a simple plant louse was shown on the screen to be about the size of an elephant. Nor were these insects dead and pre-served; they all appeared to be in the prime of life and, when not grazing on plants and vege-tation, appeared to be busy ea-ting each other.
I wish I could give credit to the chap who gave the program (Could it have been Ted Warren? Ed.) but memory fails me. I do recollect that before turning on the projector he warned us that what we were about to see was not for the squeamish, or faint of heart. How right he was. And while nobody got up and left during the screening, I did notice when the lights went up that at least some mem-bers had faces a trifle paler than those they had arrived with.
And what exactly was it we saw that might have caused this pallor? Well, visualize if you will, a praying mantis enlarged to the approximate size of a lion, this in gorgeous Kodaco- br. In its grasp it is clut- ching a living, writhing cater-pillar upon which it is about to dine. The caterpillar, sim-ilarly magnified would resemble oh, a beaver or medium sized dog.
Before our fascinated scru-tiny, the mantis brings the ca-terpillar up to its jaws and
k'age iz Adventurers Club News
Mother Nature
takes what looks like a huge bite. Just like the wrenching lunge of a man-eating shark this savage bite tears a great hole in the living body of the cater-pillar, thus exposing its still pulsating inner organs. All this, mind you, on a much larger scale than that frog you were called on to dissect in a high school lab class. Besides, the frog was dead, not writhing in silent but obvious agony as its vitals were ripped out and de-voured by the relentless mantis. I can still today see the Ca-
terpillar's smaller organs and body fluids dripping from the jaws of the mantis as it merci-lessly tore out, or sucked out, that which had been contained within the caterpillar's skin mere seconds before. We all watched, spellbound, as the now drained corpse, not unlike a punctured football, was care-lessly dropped to the ground while the now-sated mantis fell to grooming its still dripping jaws and mandibles before set-tling back into staring and un-moving rigidity as it awaited its next meal.
There followed a sequence in which a spider and a fly were the stars. Fbr sheer horror this deserved an Oscar. Except that neither of the players were ac- ting. On the contrary, what
The fly was a goner from the moment he hit the web in mid-flight
they were doing was deadly ser-ious. Serious yet sc common-place. A circumstance that has happened billions of times be- fore. And will be played out billions of times more.
As before, macrophotography had magnified both spider and fly to gargantuan sizes. Com-parisons are hardly necessary; you must surely get the picture. It was like peering into a well focused and well lighted micro- scope. The fly, you knew, was a goner from the moment he hit the web in mid-flight and began his hopeless struggles. The fast-moving spider had it se-curely trussed in little more time than it takes to tell rol-ling his struggling prey in an encircling and constricting sil-ken web with a dexterity that was pretty to watch. In mere seconds the fly was completely encased, the last mortal move-ment of the fly being possibly a slight tremor of wings or a reflex twitch of its legs.
Not even waiting for the fly to expire, the spider moved in for its meal. Sinking its pow-erful mandibles into the fly's abdomen, the juicy part to the rear of the chitinous and pre-sumably inedible thorax, it be-
(Continued on page 19)
October 1989 Page 13
Japanese Prison Camps
This brief report is a fol-low up of Frank t4ente' s program of June 22 and Ted Williams' program of July 20.
Ted Williams #999 and Art Poindexter #984 spent a great deal of time in enemy hands in prison camps. Much of that time in Japan. Ted and Art have done what few human beings are ever able to do. They seem to have risen above the experience to the extent that they do not al-low it to eat on them constant- ly and daily. As strong a pa- triot you couldn't find in Ted or Art.
In conversations with them, they have the rare ability to objectively analyze the war and realize that "war is hell". No matter who's involved, the worst of human existence comes to the fore. Preventing wars seems to keep the human lot somewhat ci-vilized enough so that we don't destroyand devour ourselves for whatever reason in this day of unlimited ability of massive and total destruction.
What happened when the war ended for those in the prison camps in Japan? Ted said where
he was (Fukuoka), it seemed the country was blanketed by open air P.A. systems. When the sur-render news came from these speakers in the Emperor's own words, it was accepted without question. Ted said the prison guards began acting more humane-ly as the war came to its end. Also, their food rations were increased ever so slightly. The prisoners were asked if they wanted an "afternoon" off from their slave labor conditions. On the day it was all over, the guards fled the prison, donned civilian garb and the prison camps gates were swung open.
Ted said Allied craft began dropping millions of leaflets which told any POWs to identify their camp locations by certain markings on the ground. Then the airplanes crisscrossed the landscape to note the camps' locations. Next, another set of cargo planes began bombing the sighted locations with food and clothing rations. With these dropped shipments was a stern warning to the natives: "Anyone caught in possession of these rations not a POW would be shot on sight -- you are to irnmedia-
(Conclusion on page 18)
Page 14 Adventurers Club News
& OFLP=C~&L ©C
A Powerful Peace by Al Adams 1688
I was much encouraged this past week when invited by Cap-tain Phillip S. Gubbins Comman-ding officer of the USS PELELIU LHA-5 to observe the finest ship in our United States Navy in war exercises with many of our Navy ships between Long Beach, Camp Pendleton and Seattle, Washing-ton.
Without exception, USS Pele-liu is the most versatile floa-ting instrument of war or peace on the oceans today. It was a rare privilege to sail on board the Peleliu from Long Beach Har-bor to Camp Pendleton to load battle-ready United States Mar-ines and their equipment that came out through the surf in their inflatable boats. The ship then proceeded one hundred miles to sea to join a large flotilla of our Navy ships for war games all the way to Seat-tle, Washington covering 2500 miles.
Peleliu LHA-5 is one of the famous five of her class, and the one with the very latest
technology. Her famous sisters are the Tarawa, the Saipan, the Belleau and the Nassau.
The tremendous performance abilities of the Peleliu enables her to take on board helicop-ters, landing craft, amphibious vehicles, tanks, six Harrier aircraft, a complete MarineBat-talion landing team of 1700 men and a Seal team of six men. (It is routine for the Seal team to swim 5 to 7 miles a day when in port. On board they are refer-red to as half seal and half nuts.)
Peleliu, in turn, can land these elements in an assault. She can operate independently or in conjunction with a large force conducting air and surface operations. Her main function is to carry out and maintain what the Marine Corps calls "tactical integrity" - getting a balanced, powerful force to an objective point at the same time, or spreading it, if re-quired, along with supplies and equipment.
October 1989 Page 15
A POWERFUL PEACE
Peleliu can carry 35 heli- copters. Her helicopters, the Huey, the Cobra, the Sea Knight and the Super Stallion by their sizes and capabilities can do the near impossible with the combined efforts of the Navy-Marine Corps team.
What a great floating insti-tution Peleliu is.
To take the helm on this great ship and direct its 40,000 tons on a course at sea was, to me, incredibly impressive. I had known this feeling only once before when steering the Queen Mary during her last great voy-age around Cape Horn frtin London to Long Beach, California.
The ship's huge elevators, One on the port side outboard and one aft can raise planes and equipment to the flight deck or lower them to the 'tween deck storage or work areas.
For defense, when working close to the beach to land Ma- rines, the Peleliu is ready with two 5" 54 caliber guns, 2 close in weapons systems (CIWS) and six 20mm guns.
The Latin motto of the ship is very appropriate for it says it all - PAX PER POTENS - PEACE THROUGH POWER.
The ship's mechanics are ex-cellently qualified. They know the aircraft and can remove and install both engines in a heli-
copter in 4 to 6 hours. This ship could not function
without her crew, for it is her dedicated manpower that seems never to sleep. They work in shifts around the 24-hour clock doing the millions of tasks it takes to ensure that Peleliu is constantly ready. She is ready for war, ready for peace and ready through her great versa-tility to accomplish her many functions. She is a very impor-tant part of the United States most modern Navy.
Peleliu can launch amphibious landing craft from the bowels of the ship's 22,000 square foot well deck out through her huge transom door like a turtle lay-ing eggs each carrying fighting marines bound to establish a beach head. There is nothing finer in a present day amphibi-ous mission than this Navy/Ma-rine Corps team and this ship.
Peleliu's crew of 55 officers and 846 enlisted men, six young women, the ship and the 1730 Marines and their 170 officer's survivability is enhanced by Close In Weapon Systems (Guns) to meet hostile air attacks and automatic 511 54 caliber guns controlled by radar for further protection against anti-air and anti-water craft.
It was interesting to realize another of this ship's poten-tial. She is capable of evacu-
Page 16 Adventurers Club News
A POWERFUL PEACE
ating people from ashore and giving disaster relief. Hun-dreds of tons of medical sup-plies and food provisions can be carried in her bilge cargo holds. This much needed tonnage can be delivered to disaster areas in minutes of her arrival on the scene. Peleliu's engi- neering plant can provide elec-
get in close to her land objec-tives, to embark Marines fast.
Two hundred of her crew are dedicated to its engineering systems under Commander William Bates, Engineering Officer, who lives in Escondido, California. Therein lies the responsibility to make the ship operate, as well as her systems and mobility. Peleliu has the two largest boi-
Two thousand evacuees or prisoners could be brought aboard. The ship could even be used as a hotel in an
emergency!
tricity ashore until the domes-tic facilities are restored. The vessel has very modern medical, surgical, x-ray, refrigerated blood, physio-therapy, dental facilities and a functioning hospital.
Peleliu's crew has a modern workout facility which enables her healthy, rugged crew to be a living, walking blood bank dedicated to contributing when the need might develop.
Should the occasion arise, 2000 evacuees or prisoners could be brought aboard and transpor-ted to other areas. Under cer-tain conditions the ship can be used as a floating hotel.
All of this capability is contained in theship's 820 feet of length and 106 feet of beam. What is incredible is this huge 40,000 ton ship has only 29 feet of draft which enables her to
lers in existence to create the steam for propulsion of 70,000 shaft horse power for each of her two shafts giving her 20 plus knots.
Peleliu stores 178,000 gal-lons of fresh water and also 122,000 gallons of fresh water ready for the boilers. She has evaporators to make 140,000 gal lons of fresh, pure water from sea water daily.
I was amazed to find that li-quid in tanks, that is, oil, diesel, gasoline, water, etc. added up to two million seven hundred thousand gallons. Oil and water are analyzed in labs on board to be sure of their purity and safe usability. Oil samples are taken from the he-licopter engines for analysis. The types of metal filings, if found, helps in advance to know if certain internal parts are
October 1989 Page 17
A POWERFUL PEACE
failing. This advance warning helps to avoid major expense.
The Supply Department, com-prised of 7 divisions with 158 crew is a story in itself, for it looks after the entire ship's needs. Stowed in 37 storerooms throughout the ship are 50,000 line items valued at 30 million dollars. Meals for the crew and the Marines will run to 10,000 per day. Then there are the ship's two stores, two barber shops, laundry and dry cleaning plants, bakery, snack bars, nu-merous vending machines and te-levision studio. A big respon-sibility is the payroll and all its variety of services. For a crew of this size, the monies involved are voluminous. The paperwork in this department is a big task. Without saying, the Supply Officer Lieutenant Phil Ramey has his work of providing services to the crew seven days a week in port or at sea.
We, the civilians, see our Navy ships in the harbor or out on the horizon, little realizing what it takes in know-how, in-telligence, technology, manpow-er, sea sense and devotion to duty to create the defense we require.
It was highly educational to be on board and see first hand what is occurring on our floa-ting institutions.
A WORD IN PRAISE OF PETER KLIKA 1943
After seeing Peter Klika's excellent program July 13, 1989 on the Mull Kingdom, I can only say that people now vacation in places that were once reached only by those that were in the Service, shipwrecked, banned to out-of-the-way places (Devil's Island), being on the run from wives, creditors and so on. I salute you Peter. You give the best programs.
--Henry von Seyfried #881
(Concluded from page 14) JAPANESE PRISON CAMPS tely deliver these rations to POWs. Ted and Art shared their rations with the starving civi-lians.
War is hell! Just ask the members of the Club who have been there. §
What I heard, and it was heartening - without hesitation from the Captain, the Engineer-ing Officer, the Command Master Chief of the Marines, to the men and women of the crew - they all say "Peleliu is the finest ship in the finest Navy!"
They proved it! § A.A.A. 8/89
Page 18 Adventurers Club News
Mother Nature
(Continued from page 13) gan sucking out the fly's ab-dominal contents. Normal enough I suppose, but what made this so especially gruesome to us fascinated viewers was that we could see the fly shrinking in size while at the same time we could observe the spider's own abdomen dilating as it ingested its prey's own entrai1sarx flu-ids.
The features of the spider were actually
showing human attributes.
Wait! There's more. My eyes, or perhaps it was merelyny ima-gination, were sharper in those days, but it seemed to me that the magnified to coaster-sized features of the spider --an or-dinary wolf spider-- were actu-ally showing human attributes. The expression on its face was similar to that one would expect to see on the face of a baby giving suck--contentment, plea-sure, determination or possibly a combination of all these. Ah well, I said I had a strong imagination in those days. So that's all it may have been.
But if that spider was ur-thinkingly and pathologically cruel, so, too, are many of us. Particularly as children. Though perhaps not to the point of be-ing pathological. As a sort of
proof, let me recount a stunt we used to pull on mosquitoes, I and my pre-teen-aged buddies. The trick here was to allow a Mosquito to land on one's bare arm or thigh, then when she (the biting mosquitoes are always the females) was engrossed in her meal, we would quietly but strongly stretch the skin of the arm or leg to the point where the luckless mosquito could not withdraw its bloodsucking pro-boscis.
Now I've never had an ento-mologist explain the mechanism of this to me, but it was ap-parent to us kids that the mos-sie must have some sort of pump mounted in its head which was activated only when its owner's proboscis was so deeply imbedded in its victuin that it appeared to be standing on its head and a transfusion was under way. This was a pump, moreover, which could not be inactivated until the mosquito had withdrawn its proboscis and resumed the hori-zontal position.
In the meantime, and despite the most strenuous efforts to withdraw (so strenuous, in fact that at times we could even see with the naked eye the mosquito' s knees bending under the strain) the pump inexorably continued to suck up blood. To the point eventually where, with a barely audible wet sort of pop!, the
October 1989 Page 19
now peppercorn-sized abdomen of
; or shorts with a mist of blood. Blood-stained shirt or white shorts! This did occasion a
Figure-head
raised eyebrow from a concerned mother, but I think mine knew better than to pursue the matter - further. So long as I was not actually dripping blood and ap- peared healthy enough it seemed wiser not to seek details.
But I will say one thing for
- i both the mantis and the spider: h they were a good deal less messy than we kids. And, unlike a number of noisily advertised cereal ads, what they did must ' have contributed substantially to their growth and well-being. .4 So who's to say that Mother Na- ture does not have a point when she chooses to bare her fangs : and prey on the helpless. I like - to think she has. Though I'll . [ still continue to fight the old bitch when I have to. Or, bet- ter yet find some way to outwit her. --Keith
THIS WAS ADVENTURE IN 1819 h
-
30 1n
Twx T i
044
UNITED STATES POSTA6E H.M.S. Victory'
Page 20 Adventurers Club News
NIGHT OF HIGH ADVENTURE Saturday, October 14 th
AT THE
ODYSSEY RESTAURANT
$35.00 PER PERSON TABLES OF 10 AVAILABLE
§ A grand night in the tradition of all of our previous Nights of High Adventure
§ Pipers - Toasts - 3 or 4 Guest Speakers
§ A night of surprises with the theme "An Adventure of a Lifetime"
§ This will be one Night of High Adventure you will not want to miss!
§ Table assignments made in the order that reservations are received. Send yours in early.
§ A great way to entertain business associ-ates, friends or family.
Checks should be made payable to Adventurers Club of Los Angeles clearly marked "For Night of High Adventure". Deliver them personally to Treasurer Keith Chase at any Thursday night meeting or, mail them to the Club at P. 0. Box 15791, Los Angeles, CA 90015, or to Treasurer Keith Chase, 918 Avenida Salvador, San Clemente, CA 92672.
DON'T MISS THIS OUR BIGGEST NIGHT OF THE YEAR
ADVENTURERS CLUB NEWS Second Class Postage P. 0. Box 15791 paid at
Los Angeles, CA 90015 Los Angeles, California
MR. DAVID C. LINC1A 11903 D0EE! AVE. DOWNY, CA 90242
October 1989 issue
