Blue Water Navy

I hope to get all 200 of you to indicate this one way or the other. In fact, I would like any and all of you to get the word out to every Navy group, club, web site, etc. and get a couple thousand responses.

Will everyone who can say YES please send an email to [email protected]?

Thanks very much for your participating, and for passing the word that this poll exists.

I realize that many/most of us had "indirect" knowledge of this, which might include workers in the boiler room/water system, smelling or tasting is, being told about it, etc. etc. We will start collecting that type of information soon.

PLEASE PASS THE WORD - The more response we get, the better picture we can have.

-JR

I have to say no to this poll but that doesn't mean I did come in contact with AO on my ship.

I was on the USS Camden an AOE. We carried everything on this ship. We had ship stores and grocery's, ammo, fuel of all kinds, and these pallets of 50 gal drums stacked to the roof in the cargo holes. Our chopper would airlift them over to the carriers when we were along side. I never ask what was in them but I imagine I could have found out if I had. I do remember us loading them on board in Subic and with them like all things loaded on our ship was a manifest of everything we loaded. That manifest stayed with the ship. I imagine that there may be records of those manifest somewhere in the archives. In fact, there may be manifest for every ship and what it had on it somewhere.

I honestly dont know. I was on the uss hancock cva19, and i have no idea.

I was on a lst in the rivers I don't think we would have had it on board.All of our water came from the river the showers smelled like fuel oil .I don't
remember anything about the drinking water.I think sometimes the water
for showers was stored in fuel tanks maybe thats why it smelled.Agent
orange was mixed with kerosene or sometype fuel oil before it was sprayed. agent orange was one of the rainbow herbicides.They also had pink,blue,white,purple.The orange had a orange stripe on the drum.So if your ship had drums with some colored stripe around it .It may have been
herbicides.I can't remember seeing it sprayed but I saw places along the river (free fire zones) miles long where the jungle was brown on the other
side it was green.

I dont know I was on the Princeton LPH-5 and on several work parties but cant remember that far back we were off the coast of vietnam for several months in 63 and went in twice -one was a sneak mission at night.

I couldn't answer the question with an affirmative answer as I worked on the flight deck after my first 30 days. All I know for sure is that we worked some very long days. Under normal conditions we worked 12 on 12 off. After I made 3rd Class I went to V-6 for about 15 days in the shop. After that I was told that since I had experience on the flight deck I was being sent back up there as Flight Deck Electrician. Twelve hour days were short days then. I had to have a power status report on the Flight Deck Officers desk an hour before Flight Quarters. After Flight Quarters were secured I had to make another status report and also repair any stations that were down. After that I could secure...Long days and nights but wouldn't trade it for anything.

I remember cleaning the ships bell that had a very oily smelly substance on it. I remember because I normally cleaned it with kool aid but kool aid wouldn't even touch it so I went to the boat sen locker to get degrease but still had to use a lot of elbow grease. I also remembering cleaning (around the same time) the spud locker that had 600lbs of rotted potatoes in it. They sat behind the asrock launcher. one day they were fine and the next day they were all rotted MR.Hanie the supply officer said it was agent orange. That was in 03/1973. but they said they stopped spraying in 1970 Can you tell I was a cook.
when you clean 600 pounds of rotten potatoes trust me you don't forget that

I was on a tin can that pulled into danang harbor a couple of times plus actually did fire support in the harbor (according to my ships history). We pulled into Nha Trang harbor also and camh ran bay and according to one machinist mate i contacted we even pulled into saigon and tied up. My ship did a lot of fire support from roughly just above the demarcation line all the way to southern tip of vietnam. We were close enough to shore doing fire support that i could hear shrapnel hitting my ship from the aft diesel room where i was assigned during firing missions. I could/would bet that somewhere during this time odds were extremely high that i did have contact with either breathing air contaminated or drank/bathed in contaminated water. If the harbor at Vung Tau was contaminated then danang harbor was contaminated from water coming down the han river. We probably in our travels south went close enough to vung tau harbor to distill contaminated water even. actually i could probably vote yes to the questionaire but have been taught to never lie so i have answer no at this time. Congress and the VA are sticking a knife in too many navy veterans. They can not have a conscious to continue doing this. How can navy veterans have contacted nhl on ships without agent orange being the culprit? How can AO have left the coast and contaminated all these people yet not contaminate people with other diseases on the presumptive list. Of course the VA may never be held accountable unfortunately to explain this curious happening.

Yes - During unreps (under way replenishment), we brought several pallets of gray drums with "Herbicide" and a federal stock number stenciled in white on board from a Navy cargo ship. That was before the orange stripe marking. Being an old farm boy, I recognized what an herbicide was. This was on board the USS Constellation, CVA-64, 1964-65, while assigned TAD to Ship's Company. I do not know what happened to that material or how it was transported off the ship.

Maybe a F.O.I.A request for supply records would bear fruit. I've had it on my mind, but I've never done one...

I could try one for my period of service on the U.S.S. Enterprise, while other shipmates could submit for their particular ship. What do you think?

M.T.

I think anything you can dig up from the old records can be put to good use. Go for it.

-JR

While I was reading a web site called "AllMilitary.com" I ran across a posting. I wish I had some way of contacting the person listed below. I served aboard the Coral Sea and a buddy letter from him would help my case......

GordyM wrote:While I was reading a web site called "AllMilitary.com" I ran across a posting. I wish I had some way of contacting the person listed below. I served aboard the Coral Sea and a buddy letter from him would help my case......

Gordy, try this email. It was listed under the email hot link and in his profile: [email protected]
Looks like his name is Al O'Guinn.
Good luck.

I served aboard the Coral Sea 1969-70 got hodskins and Blood pressure problems..this is info is kind of a shock..didnt know it was transported like this..going for some treatments...get back to this later... any info will be welcomed Thanks

RGaddy