Lewis Amos 4th Div. 1958-1963
Hurricane Alma
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In August or September1962 we were riding out Hurricane Alma off the coast of Virginia with 85 knot winds. We had an aircraft engine tied down on the fantail. It had broken loose. There was also a lot of angle iron and other heavy metal griped to the bulkheads and it washed all that stuff off too. We had a swollen sea. Boatswain and I had gone out there to try to gripe that sucker down. I went to get some chains to gripe it down with, and a swell came up on the fantail and picked me up and set me down just in front of the handrail, without me going over the side. Fortunately I had a life jacket on and I didn’t go over the side and that scared the hell out of me. We weren’t able to save that engine either. That was the scariest day of my life. That’s a little tidbit that I can recall very good on the Independence. We lost a lot of stuff that was washed over the side during that storm. I even heard that we even lost a couple of aircraft. ..... During our first Med cruise we stopped in the middle of the ocean when the sea was calm and lowered one of the elevators so we could swim and even hung a used arresting gear net out for us to climb back on. ..... While looking through the old cruse books during our St. Augustine, FL reunion in 2003 I noticed a picture of us refueling the Willie Wood DD 714. I was on that sucker before I went on the Indy. I was just at their reunion last week up in Alexandria. I went home for a couple of days and then came down here. ..... |
Special Thanks to John Koonce V-2 Div. 1961-1963 for collecting and formatting this page for our Reunion Site.
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This Page Updated 11/28/07 gwf