Red Lights at the Yardarm

Spruce from a new overhaul, the mighty U.S.S. Missouri--the only active battleship in the U.S. Navy--steamed out of Norfolk last week headed for Caribbean maneuvers. For lean, strong-jawed Captain W. D. Brown, it was the first trip since he took command last December. Just past Old Point Comfort, the Mighty Mo swung to the north of the familiar channel to run a new acoustic range. The Mighty Mo never swung back. With the sickening sensation that only a sailor can know, Captain Brown felt his ship touch bottom. Slowly, majestically, the 57,600 tons of the Mighty Mo slid on and on, and then stopped, her waterline six feet out of water, her bottom resting stolidly on the mud.

The Navy wore an air of defiant calm.. "It's not serious but it's awfully inconvenient," said a spokesman. They sent out some tugs and pulled. Nothing happened. They dug a trench around her, dredged a channel through 830 yards of shoals back to the channel. They pumped off all her oil, blasted tunnels under her with high-pressure hoses, got more tugs. Several hundred bluejackets raced from the port side to the starboard side and back, sallying ship in an effort to free her ample bottom from the sucking mud. Nothing happened.

The Navy sweated on, under a rain of callous suggestions from the Army and Air Force. Old hands wondered aloud how the Missouri had strayed nearly half a mile from the channel, and a board of inquiry was named to find out. Experts, reporters, and the merely curious pointed and peered at her exposed underbody. At week's end the Navy gave up, announced dejectedly that they would try again at the next spring tide in February. Every night, for all to see, two red lights hung at the Missouri's yardarm. They indicated that the ship was aground, as humiliating for a ship's captain as "kick me" chalked on the seat of a small boy's pants.

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