Part II. The December issue included Herb Dunlop's experiences in the Navy up to his 10-month world cruise, 1953-54. He continues:

Shortly after returning to our home port, my enlistment was over. I'd served on four carriers and one destroyer during my two enlistments, and the Air Force started looking pretty good. After checking five Air Force Recruiting Stations, I was told to visit Keesler Air Force Base in MS, home of their radar school. If l joined, I was guaranteed one of three stations: A. Texas tower in the Gulf; B. The Dew Line Stations in the Artic Circle; C. Pinetree Line in Northern Canada. The Navy started looking better so I reen­listed in CA and got the USS GOSS (DE444) out of Long Beach.

I met the love-of-my life there, and she was the PERFECT Navy wife for over 50 years. I also met the worst Naval Officer, our XO (Executive Officer, #2) an overweight (FAT!), alcoholic Lieutenant whose idea of leadership was threats and fear. He'd return drunk around 2:30 or 3:00 AM each morning and get somebody up to do stupid things like: ordering the engineering officer to drive on a stormy night to bail him out of an Oceanside, CA, jail, charged with DWI. The engineering officer was on his honeymoon! Ordered supply officer back from home (3:00 AM) because the milk in the pantry didn't taste fresh.  Woke up the duty officer so he’d make him a grilled cheese sandwich; XO didn’t like the one that the duty steward had made.  He hot the duty officer to order a crane (Todd Shipyard) to move the gangway to a lower deck because he was too drunk to climb aboard, again at 2:30 AM. He ordered the shipfitter to make a parking sign for the Captain's parking space at 3:00 AM, even though everybody knew that the Captain always put his sign in the trunk the night before getting underway. He ordered me to get the ship's slide projector so he could view pictures of his 'lady' from Hong Kong. Telling him that the ship didn't have one did no good, so I made a pot of coffee, and by that time he was passed out in the wardroom. He also ordered me to relieve the quarter­ deck watch because the man was standing back out of the rain instead of helping the XO aboard. He even had to lose 25 lbs. before he was eligible for promotion.

I made Chief Radarman on the GOSS and was sent to the Naval Air Missile Test Center. Point Magu, CA (later, Commander Pacific Missile Range). After three years, three months, and three days on the GOSS, Point Magu was like Heaven. I was with my family every night, our son Scott was born there, and, after 25 months, I was com­missioned an Ensign, OP Tech. Before receiving my commission, but probably a good reason I was commissioned, was that I saved one of our transport aircraft and 78 people aboard from getting shot down by four Sparrow III Missiles. The aircraft was directed to stay overland but had entered the splash pattern during a live firing operation. I gave a 'red' light three times in spite of being pressured by a Navy Lt. and civilian test con­ductor. Do you think either said 'thank you' or 'you were right'? Probably because I was only a Chief they didn't think that their previous actions warranted an apology. They knew that if I had not stopped the missile launches that the aircraft could not have escaped being shot down.

In spite of hating Ensigns all my life, now I was one.  After ‘Knife and Fork’ school in New port, RI, I joined the USS Hornet (carrier #5) in Hong Kong. My first HORNET deployment was spent around Japan visiting several ports for Liberty. One interesting port was Hakodate on the northern island of Hakkiado. The people and culture was more like Eskimos. While there, our shadow, a Russian spy trawler, was anchored with our ships. She followed us all over, monitoring our radio traffic. We had a cruiser and four cans with us so the Admiral's staff devised a plan. They developed a script for the cruiser to broadcast that sounded like carrier's flight ops. The cruiser and two cans steamed southeast at high speed transmitting carrier ops signals while the HORNET with two cans went into electronic silence and steamed north­ east. All intership communications was done by signal flags or flashing light, radar was off. When we passed the Russian city of Petropavlovsk, in international waters, but close, we fired up our radar and radios. In less than 30 minutes, a Russian' Bear' was giving us a good once-over. A 'Bear' is like our B-52 aircraft in size and is always flying around our surface forces in Westpac. I'll bet some Russian heads rolled because they allowed an American carrier to get so close to their strategic bases in 'Petro' with­out being detected. I think we called it 'Operation Picture Window.'

My second HORNET deployment was off Viet Nam in the South China Sea. This was 1962, three years before Tonkin Gulf Incident, but we had taken a Marine Helicopter Assault Group aboard, in addition to our full compliment of Navy aircraft. We were really crowded - people and planes everywhere. We'd leave Cubi Point, PI, and be joined by two troop transports loaded with combat Marines. For two weeks we'd steam around a ten-mile circle while the two troop ships did the same thing twenty miles away.  We’d go to Cubi/Subic Bay for a few days and back out again.  The President was just waiting for an excuse to land all those Marines, but he had to wait three years for the 'so-called' Tonkin Gulf attack on the MADDOX and TURNER JOY.

After two years aboard, I flew off the HORNET and returned to the San Francisco Bay area for duty at the Oceanographic Unit, San Fran (later named Comocean Systems, Pacific). This was headquarters for a submarine detection system with underwater sound detection devices from Mexico to Adak, AK. Each vessel, surface and sub-surface, has a noise signature which we detected, evaluated and identified. Great shore duty, but all good things have to end.

The 'Tonkin Gulf Incident' developed a need for a massive build-up in the Southeast Asia area, and I was ordered to Naval Communication Station, PI, as Ops and Plans Officer. This beat going back to sea aboard another carrier, my second choice. I was ashore, with my family, in real nice quarters, even though we were out in the 'boonies' in an Electro-Magnetic-Free Area on the South China Sea.

After another two-year-tour, I was assigned back again to Treasure Island as Director (Officer-in-Charge) Radar Class A School. I found it strange that I was the first former Radarman to be boss of that school even though it had been in existence since WWII. The former Directors were Electronic/Technical types that used difficult curriculum resulting in a 27% attrition rate. The fleet needed operators, talkers, plotters, men who could write forward or backward on display boards. With the Bureau's blessing, we rewrote the technical curriculum to one reflecting what I knew shipboard Combat Information Centers (CIC) needed. When I left there two years later, our attrition was down to 4%, an acceptable figure.

My next, and final Naval assignment, was back to carriers and Viet Nam, the USS HANCOCK (carrier #6), the oldest Essex class carrier in the Navy.  We spent endless days and weeks operating on either 'Dixie' station off South Viet Nam or 'Yankee' Station off North Viet Nam. We'd launch strikes, and recover same, for 12 hours and then stand-down for another 12 while our sister carrier launched strikes. We kept four carriers off-shore all the time, two Yankee and two Dixie. We did rotate one to operate off Korea as a result of the capture of the USS PUEBLO by the North Koreans. This was called 'Defender' station, good duty 'cause we'd pull into Jap ports now and then for R&R.

One night we were in Sasebo, Japan, and received a panic call to get underway and assist, we assumed, our 'spy' ship off Korea. We approached a huge fleet of small lap fishing boats, hundreds all together, impossible to plot. It looked like dozens of rain storms on the radar, so the Skipper ordered full speed ahead, aimed two 36" search lights directly ahead, sounded ships horn/whistle at 30-second intervals and extinguished all lights that would illuminate our identifying hull/stack numbers. Not sure how many sampans got swamped that night, but we got on station in record time for what resulted in a false alarm.

Back to Viet Nam and during our last few weeks on Yankee Stations, before going home, one of our aircraft returned with a 'hung' 500-lb bomb. It was released over target but failed to fall with the others; all efforts to shake it loose failed, fuel was low, and our tanker aircraft were still overland. So the decision was to land aboard with the hung bomb, instead of ditching the aircraft. As the aircraft touched down and was arrested, the bomb fell free and went bounding up the deck. This was all caught on our closed-circuit TV in the Operations Office. We could hear every bounce and watched it pass almost over our heads. All I could think was after twenty-four years, within weeks of retirement, I'd be done-in by one of our own bombs.

In spite of everything, we made it back to the states, and while the USS HANCOCK was in San Diego I was 'piped over the side' on the way to retirement and a fellow Lieutenant flew me to Atascadero (Paso Robles Airport, 10 miles away).

I retired from the Navy as a Lieutenant (03e-LDG) on I Aug 1970 and started with the State of CA as a Correctional Officer on 3 Aug 1970; had a whole weekend off.  We had a home built on a few acres in Atascadero, and I moved my family there prior to my last deployment to Viet Name; we planned to be there forever.  After Gov Reagan became President, CA went ‘to hell in a handbasket.’ So, after 10 years, I retired from Dept.of Corrections, and we moved to LA, my wife's home state.

I lost my wife in 2005, the love-of-my-life for over 50 years of marriage, wonderful, short years!

To keep from losing my mind, or eating my .45, friends suggested that I join the Bossier Parish Sheriff's Posse, a volunteer group who back-up deputies, patrol neighbor­hoods, direct traffic, etc. I patrol usually three to four days each week in one of our seven patrol cars. It's very interesting, meet a lot of nice people and has been good therapy for me. Most of our men are retired military, and many are, like me, widowers. We buy our own uniforms, but the Sheriff supplies the patrol cars and gasoline to cover the eight districts in Bossier Parish.