my Mother's sister Lil
and her daughter, my cousin, Debbie. 
My best friend's Mother and sister also sent Christmas
cakes and candy. (My best friend was Marvin Wright, no
relation. His parents owned a motel next door to my
Dad's restaurant on 40 Highway in Independence, Missouri
and we had met when we were nine years old. Marvin 
and I grew up together as I was always at the restaurant
when not in school. When I went away to college, he
joined the Air Force. After we were both out of the
service, we went into business together. 
Marvin was a natural for taking things, anything, apart and making it work.
We
had a good time, learned a lot about business and
struggled through three years of partnership. He was
married to a woman that I had introduced him to when we
began our business and I was divorced from my first
wife. When we split the business and went our separate
ways, he was divorced and I had married my second wife
whom I had met through the business.)
The Tonkin Gulf really
started to heat up after New Years. There must have been
more of a threat from
North Vietnamese Migs because we began to test our
antiaircraft missiles, the
Terrier.
They would cycle from the magazine to the launcher so
fast you could hardly tell when it happened. First the
launcher was empty, then the missiles were there. Two
launchers with two missiles each. When the missiles took
off they were traveling 2000 miles an hour. The blast
from their exhaust would blow anything behind them clear
off the ship. Storage boxes bolted to the deck and even
the mortar for radar suppression.
The last time we tested them one was launched straight
up, it made a figure eight and came straight down at the
ship. Fortunately it was destroyed. After that, we began
holding drills on the three inch gun emplacements. These
guns were hand loaded and if done accurately, could fire
90 rounds a minute. The crews became very proficient but
the fastest I ever saw them move was when one of the
bullets double cycled and broke in half.
When the crews reached a point of efficiency that
satisfied the people in charge, they put us up against
an
F-4. (F-4_Phantom)
What a joke that was. We would see a puff of smoke on
the horizon and the next instant the F-4 was straight up
over us with after-burners blazing.
I think it was after that the Navy brought in the Guided
Missile Cruiser U.S.S Chicago. (History)
(More)
We heard that it shot down a Mig 70 miles away. The poor
pilot probably never new what hit him.
Letter home - 7 January 1968
The Canberra was shadowed by a Russian destroyer while
patrolling off Haiphong Harbor. It kept its distance,
but the Russian trawler that picked up our trash and
disrupted radio transmissions became a nuisance. During
one replenishing we had to do an emergency breakaway
because the trawler sat stationary in our path.
In spite of the hard work, we managed to maintain our
morale.
In spite of the seeming futility, we continued to train
on the 3" anti-aircraft guns. After spending one long
day practicing on floating targets and improving our
proficiency, I was standing watch on the bridge. I
rotated between steering the ship, manning the engine
controls and listening on the sound powered phones. It
was so dark on the deck that you couldn't see your hand
in front of your face and because of the threat of being
shot at, the lookouts on the sides of the ship would
rotate their watches on deck between being in the safety
of the 5" turret and manning the sound powered phones on
the 3" mounts. "Glunt", as one of the crew was known,
was on the sound powered phone on the port side of the
ship. Just before midnight, I was on the phone on the
bridge and heard a loud scream, then silence. I checked
with the other lookouts around the ship and Glunt was
the only one that didn't answer. His alternate in the 5"
mount was sent to check on him. There was another scream
followed by some groaning. Nobody else wanted to go out
and check. The two screaming, moaning lookouts were
found on the main deck two decks below their stations on
the 03 level where the 3" mounts were located. Glunt had
a broken arm, but the other lookout was only bruised. He
had fallen on Glunt. Apparently, the days blasting with
the 3" guns had blown the trap door open to the Shute
for dropping the shell casings to the main deck and the
two lookouts had fallen through.
By mid January of 1968 the Canberra left the theater of
operations in the Tonkin Gulf and headed to Yokusuka,
Japan for some well earned rest and relaxation.
I had duty the first day we were in port and one of the
tasks that I was assigned was to "frap" the forward line
from the bow of the ship to the dock.
Besides being very scary and difficult to balance, my
butt was sore for a week. When I did go on liberty,
I headed straight for the post exchange and bought a
nice camera.
We had some good weather while in port
and the shipboard duty wasn't all that bad after what we
had been through.
The weather, though nice, was cooler in Japan and we
wore our jersey blues to keep warm.
A small group of us discovered the EM Club on the base
where we could enjoy steak dinners for $2.00. The menu
called them New York strip steaks, but I knew them as
Kansas City cuts.
One day a group of us
went on a tour of the area around Tokyo and saw the high
speed train depot
and the site of the 1964 Olympics,
some from a gondola.
