Tom Marfiak
Like a bride to a bridegroom, USS Biddle arrived at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in the late summer of 1979. The expectations were great. A welcome at Penn’s Landing kicked off an effort to create a bond between the ship and the city. Unfortunately, once in the throes of the overhaul, that bond would undergo significant stress.
It did not take very long. The barracks for the crew were beyond belief! Windows were missing—not a good idea with winter coming on. The barracks barge allotted was far below Navy standards. Our first order of business was to turn the crew loose on improving their own living conditions. Even as their ship sat on the blocks of the dry dock, crew members worked day and night to create a living environment. The great ship had found a resting place, but at what cost?
Stripped of her ammunitions, white canvas and awnings, the ship sat astride the blocks like a patient waiting for the surgeon’s care. She would have not long to wait.
Fairness requires that it be noted all ships encountered demanding industrial environments in those days. We had not yet learned to treat them as the thoroughbreds they are. Yet, these circumstances were especially arduous. The progressive malaise that had spread throughout the armed forces during the Carter era had reached even to the basic services required in a shipyard. Our dry dock, surrounded by four cranes, could muster only one working crane, far inadequate to the task of moving machinery off the ship. It reached the point where, on one day, I was forced to suspend all shipyard work, to the consternation of the shipyard commander, because the congestion below had come to such a state that even minimum efforts to assure the safety of the ship could not be assured.
Under the surgeon’s scalpel, the ship sat, surrounded by the vast industrial sprawl of the yard, holes gapping in her superstructure, far from the sea. Today, improvements to weapons systems are frequently matters of installing new software, or changing computer drives. In this era, the installation of new systems required nothing less than the equivalent of open-heart surgery. Whether or not the patient would recover was simply a matter of the dedication of the crew and the hard work of myriad technicians and yard workers coming together as a team. Bit by bit, one rung at a time, The USS Biddle came to life. Within her superstructure, a new generation of combat systems had been installed. She was the newest and brightest. Her technicians were thrilled to have at their fingertips the best the United States could put to sea. Below decks, the pumps and boilers had been renewed. The rigors of thousands of miles at sea had been eliminated and she stood, once again, a gray hull ready for duty, with a crew of dedicated sailors to help her reach her maximum capability.
We can only imagine today the sacrifices that were made to bring each system on line, one after another. Finally the day came. The boilers came to life, and new steam coursed through systems that had for too long lain dormant, she would once again take to the sea. The Cold War had nearly a decade to run, and there was work to be done. USS Biddle, like her sister ships, would take to the seas again.
Hard Charger! 