Talk:Redwing (YTB-783)

Wrecked
According to the Anchorage Daily News (https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/2016/05/19/frustration-lingers-over-two-derelict-tugboats-in-adak/) the two tugs on Adak (YTB-783 and YTB-818) broke loose during a "brutal storm" in December of 2015 and were wrecked. The 783 was sunk, the 818 washed ashore and is still visible on Google Earth.

I don't know, but I can speculate that the storm was from the north. I was stationed on Adak in 1976 and 1977 and served in Ship's Division on the YTB-783 and also on the YTM-402, which was up there at the time. When storm winds were due north and of just the right force, they would pile water up on the south shore of the bay. That pile of water would become too high and would release a huge wave which raced northwards across the bay. They would reflect off of the north shore and return south, setting off an oscillation which continued until the waves reached the maximum possible for that little bowl of energy. And they would repeat and repeat and repeat for hours. Since the base and piers were on the north side of the bay, they would get hammered. We usually got our boats underway and went over to Finger Bay when these harbor storm surges were forecast. I happened to be the guy left on watch in the Ships Division office one time when a particularly bad harbor surge occurred and it was amazing to see. Breaking waves would hit our piers with crests higher than the docks (which were probably 12+ feet above the water.) The surge passing beneath the docks would jet up through the cracks between the dock planks. These were docks that you could drive trucks or heavy equipment out on. They took some damage from this and many truckloads of soil was washed out from the shore end of one of the piers. If you use the time slider in Google Earth at this location (51.859557°, -176.645504°) you'll see the ghost of what was a pretty sturdy jetty. There used to be three piers to the left of it, each large and heavy. Those were the Ship's Division docks where we kept the tugs and a barge. They were intact when I left the island in 1977. But they were already destroyed and the jetty broken by the time of the earliest clear photo on the time slider (2006) and I can't even make them out in the very blurry 1985 image. The point of all of this being: In the Aleutians, even in a jetty-protected smaller harbor which is inside a larger harbor which is inside a large, protected bay, you can still get catastrophic wave action from those storms. If you haven't been there, you just cannot imagine it.

The two tugs, 783 and 818 were transferred to the Aleut Indians when the base was shut down and transferred to them. By that time the tugs were moored over at the larger docks to the east, where the larger ships usually tied up. Following the images in Google Earth I can see that they were eventually moved to a little stubby dock that I don't even remember. (There were three large ship docks while I was there, the eastern-most of them must apparently have been taken out by a storm, too. Possibly the same one that trashed the Ship's Division docks.)  Sure enough, the 6/2016 image shows one tug on its side and the other missing (sunk.)  FatBear1 (talk) 17:25, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Day in the life, Year in the life, etc.
I was stationed on Adak in 1976 and 1977, assigned to Ship's Division - the division which managed the harbor and operated the tugs. I was assigned to the YTB-783 during the first year of my 18 month stay up there. I can't really write this up as part of the article, because Wikipedia does not allow actual, real, live history, but I thought I'd write up some of what we did and how we lived here in the talk section, hoping that it will at least be preserved in this manner.

I hated the Navy, but I can't fault them on one thing: my year and a half on Adak was the Adventure that I was promised in the TV ads ("The Navy - it's not just a job, it's an Adventure!")  Navy tugs are typically considered more akin to shore duty. You go out and push ships around in a harbor, then go home and be all comfy and everything until you are called out again. Etc. In big bases like San Diego and Norfolk and so on, there are special boats for every purpose and contractors for unusual cases, etc. Adak is 1200 miles out from Anchorage which was already beyond nowhere (in the 1970s.) If the government needed a boat to do a job, we were it. That made for quite the variety of experiences. Here are some samples:

The government had a treaty with the Aleuts to haul mail, passengers, and limited cargo (fresh fruits and vegetables) to the village on Atka, which was about a 140 mile trip through the very stormy North Pacific ocean. That meant an early start, a long day underway, anchor out and offload, spend the night at anchor, and go back to Adak the next day. We did this once a month in the winter and twice a month the rest of the year. Winter runs were particularly unpleasant, though any time of the year can see nasty storms.

We did SARs (search and rescue). A few examples of the different types of SARs: Removing injured seamen from other vessels (usually Japanese trawlers), finding and rescuing a guy from a small fishing boat with a dead engine, rescuing a marine who fell from a cliff while on watch, medevac a 3 year old girl from Atka (she lived! one of the best days of my life), and attempting the rescue of a Japanese trawler with a dead engine. That last one was nightmarish. After 11 hours in 45' seas with 65' reflection nodes off of the south shore of Atka we learned that a USCG cutter (the Rush, I think) was also attempting to reach the trawler. They were expected to reach it first, so we turned back. About 30 minutes after returning to the base, we were sent back out again. Apparently the trawler wasn't where they said they were. We found them at about the same time that the cutter found them. A USCG high endurance cutter is much more seaworthy than a 105' harbor tug, so the cutter took them under tow and we headed home again. Total time was approximately 23 hours in those conditions.

Transporting caribou hunters for Special Services. Navy Special Services operated a hunting camp on the west side of the island. I think it was in Shagak Bay. Every Monday we would take a group of hunters around, let them off, pick up last week's group, and continue on around the island and back to base. We often watched the shore with binoculars, just to makes sure nothing sneaky was happening. Illegal canneries, Soviet spies (really), and the like.

We obviously did ship assists, moved barges, and other harbor tug stuff. The General H. H. Arnold was a regular at the fuel pier. They always came and left either at night or under heavy cloud cover. We had rubbers for handling subs. One night we were suddenly told to proceed to some specific coordinates at a certain time. This was unusual. We got there and waited. Just at sunrise we had a real Hollywood moment. It was a vivid sunrise and right up next to us rose a submarine. We were told to escort it back to Adak for repairs, keeping to the south of it. Later, I learned about subs and I think we were putting up a noise curtain between it and the open Pacific Ocean. Making noise was one thing we were good at.

These are only a few examples. Adak was a very busy base during the cold war. At the end of 1976 the division officer was putting together underway reports and discovered that we had done more underway time that year than a typical destroyer. We were very tired.

But we were not hungry. Because of our frequent and unpredictable underway schedule, and because the tugs had nice galleys in them, and because we were a mile from the chow hall on Bering Hill (which can be completely unreachable during and after snow storms) we were paid ComRats and expected to feed ourselves. We pooled our ComRats money and bought staples. But we also bought fishing and hunting licenses from our ComRats pool. And we lived on salmon, trout, halibut, "Japanese perch" (not sure if that's really the correct name, but it's what they called them up there), Alaska king crab, and Caribou. My culinary expectations have never really declined to the level of the average American since then. Few people have any idea what truly fresh Alaska king crab tastes like. I'm talking about crab that was alive 15 minutes ago. Or a wild caribou roast with no stupid "rubs" or anything to cover up for the nasty taste of feedlot beef. You just can't beat it. I'll eat canned or frozen fish, but it isn't the same. I can't even stand modern beef anymore and that was over 40 years ago.

We fished whenever we could. Anchored out at Atka? Drop a line over the side. Paying a visit to Great Sitkin? Put the small boat in the water so you can get away from the noisy tug and catch the really big halibut (150 to 210 pounds personally seen.) Anchored in Hidden Bay checking out the survival cabin? Time to get that line wet! Caribou hunting is particularly easy from a tug. You cruise along close with the binoculars on the shore. If you spot a herd you can just drop in at the nearest bay and you already know where they are. You plan your shot with retrieval in mind. Everything is so steep that a few strong young men can drag them downhill to the beach. We enjoyed all of this, but it was also how we ate.

We had semi-private rooms with beds, lockers, desks, and whatever other comfy furnishings we could scrounge up in the Ship's Division building. And we had bunks on the tugs for when we had to sleep underway. The Ship's Division building was huge, with two-stories built inside of it along the north and south walls, and with SeaBees working on their large equipment up the open center part of the building. Our rooms were on the upper floor along the north side - with the EOD (Explosive Ordinance Demolition) lab below us. Sweet dreams! (Hah!) The division offices were on the second floor in the southeast corner of the building with storage below. I honestly don't remember what was in the Southwest corner of the building. Probably more SeaBees.

We maintained a 24/7 harbor control watch in the Ship's Division office. Not that we enlisted men ever controlled anything. Mostly we logged boats/ships in and out, answered the phone, and listened to the radio go shshshshshshshshshshshshsh. 2716 was our frequency. After normal working hours we stood 4 hour watches which also required the we tour and board all tugs once per hour, checking lines and boilers and bilges (and food storage cupboards on our own boat.) And listened to the radio go shshshshshshshshshshsh. We were required to report the comings and goings of the tugs and ships to the base captain, no matter the time of night. The first time I did it I was terrified to wake the old man (who was probably much younger than I am now) when he was obviously sleeping. Then I got used to it and almost gleeful about waking him when here I was struggling to remain awake for four hours in the middle of the night. But after you get awakened in the middle of the night enough times yourself, you start to pity the guy. So eventually I go to the point of making sincere apologies for waking him at 2:30 in the morning or whenever. On some Saturday watches I would bring my 13" B&W TV up to the office and watch the base TV station. Once a month they would have all day RoadRunner cartoons or all day Donald Duck cartoons, etc.  What excitement.  Yawn.  I haven't owned a TV since I left Adak.  You just can't top a schedule like that.  (Kidding about the content, but not about not owning a TV since then.)  And even with the TV running there was still that shshshshshshshshshshshsh in the background.  It was the height of excitement to receive a SAR call on the radio.  Somewhere over in the aviation sector there was an "Adak SAR" organization.  I presume their reason for existence was aviation SARs.  After all, P3 squadrons flew from Adak around the clock and we had like 18 very unreliable helicopters.  So, because their call sign was "Adak SAR", they took most of the maritime SAR calls, too.  But those old Navy radios were crap and sometimes they didn't hear or couldn't answer and so we did. Then we got to wake up all kinds of people.

This has been an extremely brief insight into what it was like to be assigned to a Navy tug in the Aleutians in the 1970s. I left out the sneaky cold war stuff. When you are just the enlisted man running the engines, you don't show up in the reports and so any claims I make could easily be denied and I'd have no way of proving them. It was definitely an adventure being stationed up there. I'm glad I had it, but glad I'll never have to repeat it. FatBear1 (talk) 19:00, 17 July 2023 (UTC)