USS Card — Lawrence Johnson

The USS Warren Lynn Card was DE 383 had the worst reputation of any ship in the Reserve fleet. All that was about to change; Commander Robert Mills had assumed command. It was to be a just another scheduled routine combat readiness exercise, down to Guantanamo Bay and back. What it turned out to be was a series of experiences the crew will never forget. The turbulent sea was relentless in its punishment of the little 308 foot ship. The USS Warren Lynn Card DE 383 was a tough, stable little vessel, well designed for heavy seas. The ship was designed to recover from 70° rolls but the crew was not. After all they had been through now the storm of storms. Many times the Card was standing on end with its bow out of the water and the depth charges submerged. It stood on end for what seemed to be five minutes was actually more like 10 seconds. The sound of the wind and rain like an oncoming freight train ran over the ship in a seemingly unending relentless assault rolling side to side and rocking fore and aft. On-coming swells crashed into the forward hull, with a loud bump that felt like it was crashing into large rocks. Sometimes the crashing of the sea exploded sprays of powerful gushes flying in all directions. Each onslaught was followed by climbing a giant wave standing the ship on its stern with the stem out of the water and then falling into the trough the wave created standing on its head with the screws out of the water, the bow plunging into the green and white swirling sea. Without resistance from the sea, the screws would race wildly causing the governors on the propeller shafts to slow the revolutions. If the governor did not slow the shafts, the generators and drive motors would shut down. Then they would have to go through a restart procedure to bring the generators back online, and then start the electric motors that drove the screws all while wallowing in seas without steering or forward control. Situations like that can sink a vessel. Another mountainous wave lifted the craft higher and higher, then swiftly abandoning its purpose dropping her 20 feet in an abyss with bone shuttering sudden stop landing her back on the beam. There was no respite as once again a watery hand lifted the bow upward and dropping her bow downward once again lifting the drive propellers out of the water. There were two instant flashes from the oncoming ship, followed by a vague frump, frump of gunfire off in the distance then the whine of shells heading for the Card, falling short generating two columns of water sprouting up from where they entered the sea. Then! A random shell from the enemy's amidships gun that slammed into the Card's forward gun mount. The sudden explosion threw a blinding red flash across the forecastle and the up to the pilot house carrying with it a blistering hot shock wave and the stench of cordite and charred flesh and steel creating a blazing inferno that seemed to engulf the entire bow of the ship. The force of the detonation changed the normal five pounds per square inch air pressure to about two thousand pounds per square inch. The pyrotechnics, concussion, heat and pressure of the eruption of the corvette's shell was enough to instantly tear away muscle from bone and limbs from body tearing up the steel deck plates and gun parts transforming them into shards of bent fragments with razor edges blowing out in all directions, tearing to small pieces everything in their path.