USS Joseph P. Kennedy Jr.

[August]

[Gerald]

Very nice pictures, thank you for sharing this,

[elanaiba]

Very cool

Any pics of ASW equipment?

[Sailor Steve]

Thanks for that, Dave. It brings back a lot of memories.

1. Obviously the ship herself. FRAM 2, looks exactly like my old Brinkley Bass (DD-887).

2. Looking forward along the starboard gangway. The furthest platform you can see is the signal bridge. Here is a view from forty years ago, looking down from there to about where this picture was taken from.



3. You know, in ten months aboard that tub, I never once set foot in the engine or boiler rooms.

4. Another place I only visited once, and that when I was ordered to.

5. Fire control. Any time someone claims that the deck gun on his u-boat should be stabilized, show him this picture.

6. Fire control for the ASROC, with one on display. The actual storage/launcher is barely visible in the upper left of the picture. Here is the same area, but taken from above from the aft end of the bridge deck.



One thing that seems to be missing from JP Kennedy is the ZUNI anti-aircraft rocket launcher, visible in my picture alongside the semi-circular blast shield.

7. The Bridge. At the back of the picture you can barely see the captain's chair. Many's the time I delivered messages to him there.

8. Looking aft from the bridge deck, on the starboard side opposite where my earlier picture was taken from.

9. Inside the Hangar. Part of the FRAM (Fleet Rehabilitation And Maintainance) program was a hangar to house the DASH (Drone Anti-Submarine Helicopter). Remote-controlled, it carried two homing torpedoes - and they actually have one! The project was a complete failure. I was told that one of ours had a blade lock up and crashed, and the other flew away over the horizon when the radio-control failed. Whatever the truth was, by the time I was aboard the hangar was used only for storage and watching movies.

Here is the landing platform and hangar seen looking down from a tender.



And the landing platform playing host to some visiting Aussies.



10. Looks like a boiler to me, but what do I know - I never actually saw it.


11. Crew quarters, obviously. Doesn't look too familiar, so I'm guessing forward, beneath the mess deck. Radiomen were in the after quarters.

Great pictures, guys. Thanks for the memories.

[Jimbuna]

We need more......nice pics

[Takeda Shingen]

Great shots, August. I am beginning to regret not going to this.

EDIT: Steve's shots are fantastic too!

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

One thing that seems to be missing from JP Kennedy is the ZUNI anti-aircraft rocket launcher, visible in my picture alongside the semi-circular blast shield.

duuude... that WHAT!? Seriously Zunis for AAW? I know they used rockets for chaffing vampires but for shooting down aircraft?

I think they toyed with it in WWII but found it didn't work too well. They kept at it?

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by TLAM Strike

duuude... that WHAT!? Seriously Zunis for AAW? I know they used rockets for chaffing vampires but for shooting down aircraft?

I think they toyed with it in WWII but found it didn't work too well. They kept at it?

We had them. Someone told me that's what they were for. I don't know anything other than that.

The only AA we had for sure was the dual-purpose part of the 5" guns - all four of them. One day during an excersize an A-7 came straight at us, maybe fifty feet above the water. By the time the guns could be brought to bear he had hopped up and over us. By the time they could be swung around the other way he had gone vertical and was out of range before the director could get a position lock.

Absolutely useless in modern warfare. In every mock engagement we had, whether aircraft or submarine, we lost.