THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, May 1, 1996 TAG: 9605010418
SECTION: MILITARY NEWS PAGE: A8 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ALISON BOLOGNA, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines
There's a day he says he'll never forget - the day his destroyer was hit by a torpedo that didn't go off.
``We heard a scraping noise and we didn't know what it was,'' Stormy Weber said. ``The next morning, we found it washed up on the beach, still loaded.''
This was one of the stories shared last week among 50 retired destroyer escort commanding officers who served during World War II.
For 48 years, these men have been meeting to rekindle war memories and marvel at the changes in the Navy. Last week, they visited the destroyer Arleigh Burke, named after ``the Navy's most famous destroyerman,'' who died Jan. 1, 1996.
``I tell my fellow officers that we were on the Santa Maria compared to this ship,'' said Jack Folberg, the assistant secretary of the Navy from 1949-53 - and the man responsible for bringing the first jet airplane into the Navy during the Korean War.
One of the ship's major changes was the replacement of rockets for missiles, which can travel twice the speed of sound and destroy enemy ships as far as 800 miles away - the distance from Virginia Beach to Chicago.
Despite such changes, many of the retired officers, who came to the reunion in their Navy blue ``built to fight'' caps, said some things about Navy ships haven't changed at all.
``They can still sink,'' Jack Maloney said.
Stuart Kadison, 73, the youngest commanding officer of the group, said what impressed him most was the size of the ship. During the war, he said, his ship weighed about 1,500 tons. Now, one ship weighs about 9,000 tons.
``This one ship is like six of our old ships put together,'' he said. ``I'm staggered by the whole thing.''
The ship's sophistication also amazed him. Kadison said if he had to sail a ship today, he would know what had to be done, but he wouldn't know how to do it.
``I could still say `all engines stop - all engines back' and the same things would happen,'' Kadison said. ``But today instead of doing things manually, they would have buttons to push and I wouldn't know which ones.''
Archer Trench, like Kadison, said that being on the ship, although ``3,000 percent different,'' still made him look around to make sure nothing was there that shouldn't be.
``Being a CO, you always have to be in control of yourself and your ship,'' Kadison said. ``If you made a mistake, it could kill a lot of people, so I never panicked, but I was scared the whole time.''
But John Williamson, founder of the Williamson turn - a standard turn used to rescue men who fall overboard - said it was fun to be at sea again.
Williamson recalled how he sank six Japanese submarines in 12 days during the war - the most enemy ships sunk by Navy ships in U.S. history - and how he lost 37 sailors when a Japanese suicide plane crashed into his ship.
``I always asked myself what I could have done differently,'' he said. ``But I could never come up with anything.''
Williamson said the accident was so bad that the ship had to be scrapped.
Jack Maloney shared a different war story: When he was refueling in Nova Scotia, he found out that his wife had given birth to their second child, Robert.
``I was so excited I ran the ship into the pier,'' he said. ``It got a little bump.''
Despite their different stories, all the officers said they enjoyed being in the Navy because there's nothing like it in civilian life.
``It's the difference between drone life and real life,'' Folberg said. ``It's young men in search of leadership.''
Kadison agreed. ``There's nothing like command at sea,'' he said. ``So few people get to do it.''
And that's the bond these men have shared for the last 50 years.
``Every year there are a few less of us,'' Kadison said. ``But the men here today look like they're in pretty good shape.'' ILLUSTRATION: CANDICE C. CUSIC
The Virginian-Pilot
Pat Coburn, retired rear admiral, tries out the admiral's chair on
the destroyer Arleigh Burke. He was one of 50 World War II officers
at a reunion last week. Behind him is J.J. Wacher.
by CNB