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When that chore was finished I finally got my orders to leave the ship. I believe there were three of us leaving the Whetstone. We went ashore were given train tickets for Lido Beach Separation Center on Long Island NY When we boarded the train we were give bunks on a Sleeper car with real sheets. That was the only time that happened to me since I joined the navy.
I was discharged from the Navy May 1,1946 after three years service.
Sincerely
Robert L Huneven EM 3/c
Robert L
Huneven
Hurd Pond Rd
Newport, NH 03773-7717
Should you wish to print any or all of this letter you have my permission.
When the Stone was at anchor, we always had one boiler, and both pump rooms active. I stood my anchored watches in starboard pump room watching the evaporators, and generators. Also on these watches, there was an electrician watching the electric board.
During these watches to help pass off time, the MM and the EM just sat around and talked mostly.
On this day, we were running on a split electric load, meaning that the starboard generator was carrying the electric load for the starboard side, and the port generator was carrying port side.
I have forgotten his name, but on one of this watches, the electrician and I were talking over by the board. We were both leaning against the board; the EM next to the re-set and trip levers , and I was at the extreme inboard end, next to the phone. We were just standing there, and talking about whatever, when the board tripped, and the electric load dropped on the starboard side.
Quickly the electrician switched the starboard load to the port side. Then he checked the board, and found there was nothing wrong. After about a minute or two, the EM in my pump room, and the one on the port side, split the load again.
I didn’t think anything about it but not long after the power was restored, I saw Sitton, MM-3 climb up the ladder out of the pump room.
The EM and I discussed the incident, between us,
and couldn’t figure it out. Later the EM chief asks me about it. I
didn’t think much about that at the time either, but I later found out
that the EM had told his chief that it was I who had tripped the board.
As I mentioned earlier, it was the electrician who was next to the trip
lever. The phone where I was standing is a good three feet from that
lever.
Ole Sitton was a short timer at the time and he has left this world for the next, so I can tell this now. Just a few days before he left the ship, only he and I were in the starboard pump room. He had something wrapped up in some rags, and he came to me with it.
“Let me show you something” he said. Then he un-wrapped the telescope from the quarter deck.
“So it was you that took it” I said, remembering it had been reported missing a short while back. That telescope stayed on the quarter deck all the time even when we were at sea.
“Do you remember” he said, “when you had the watch and the board tripped”?
“Yep” I said.
“Well look at this” and he pointed to a blackened and pitted spot on one end, then to the same kind of spot on the other end.
He said, “I was trying to hide it up underneath the switch board, and it shorted out and tripped the board”.
“Oh yea, what kept it from killing you” I asked.
“I think it was this black leather covering that shielded me” he said. “Come down to the lower level and I will show you”
We went down to the lower level, and he showed me two burned spots up under the board that matched those on the telescope.
I have a picture of Sitton leaving the stone in Nam, with Wilson MM-1 carrying his sea bag off. I presume that he left the Stone with that telescope in his sea bag.
Tom L.
