Good for you, Thanks for your service. My stepson is now a PO3 Nuclear Machinists Mate. One of my oldest friends father served on the original Lexington, then the original Yorktown.
He was a radio operator, had had enough of carriers so ended up as a radio operator in a Beachmasters party at Tarawa. Decided he’d rather be back on a ship. Assigned to the Kalinin Bay, was taking a message from the radio room to the bridge when the radio room was hit by Japanese cruise fire. His service record reads like a movie.He was as lucky or unlucky as hell with 2 carriers sunk underneath him and one seriously damaged. He spent 30 years in the navy I’m sure he would have been standing next to you as would my friend, stepson and I.
Wow! That is some history there! Good gosh, both Lexington and Yorktown! I can’t imagine it.
I recall reading a passage in an excellent book a while back called either “Halsey’s Typhoon” or “In Harm’s Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors” and in it they talked about a guy who had been on a ship that sank, and he survived when so many others didn’t.
I recall, that when they sent him back to the states, he said he would never get on a ship again on the ocean, but they convinced him nothing would happen, and...he reluctantly agreed to get on the vessel. On the way back, halfway across the Pacific to Hawaii, the ship had some kind of engineering causualty which caused it to flood and sink!
I can see how your friend’s father would have got through one sinking, but...two would be too much for me (as it was for him, apparently!)
It does make the point-sometimes, when your number is up...it is up, and when it isn’t...it isn’t.
I was talking to a combat vet one time on this forum about how being shelled by artillery must make you crazy and panicked enough to simply jump up and run like hell to escape, and he said that wasn’t the most mind-bending part-he said that one also knew that if you got up and ran, you might simply run right into a shell that would have otherwise missed you!