Biddle at Bath
James Treadway
Authorized by Congress on 17 September 1961 and ordered by the Navy on 16 January 1962, Biddle’s keel was laid on 9 December 1963, the three hundred forty seventh keel laid at Bath Iron Works (BIW), Bath, Maine. Biddle was the last of nine Belknap Class guided missile frigates and the eighth built by BIW of the Leahy and Belknap Classes. The fact that she was the last of her class to be built is significant – Biddle was the recipient of the accumulated knowledge and experience from building seventeen similar, if not identical, ships.
Building a ship of Biddle's size and complexity is a time-consuming, expensive and difficult task requiring the expertise of thousands who represent hundreds of disciplines. It speaks volumes when we consider how so many unrelated systems and ideas can be combined in a warship that must perform specific, difficult and dangerous tasks. I had hoped to have a qualified ship design engineer provide some design and construction details but was unable to locate such an individual. Perhaps the following photo sequence will give the reader a small appreciation of the task.
Keel laying - 9 Dec 1963
Bow view - 2 January 1964
Stern view - 2 January 1964
Bow view - 2 Apr 1964
Stern view - 2 Apr 1964
Bow view - 1 Jul 1964
Stern view - 1 Jul 1964
Bow view - 5 Oct 1964
Stern view - 5 Oct 1964
Bow view - 5 Jan 1965
Stern view - 5 Jan 1965
Bow view - 1 Apr 1965
Stern view - 1 Apr 1965
Bow - Prelaunch
Stern view - 1 July 1965
Launching - 2 Jul 1965
Vessel Waterborne 2 Jul 1965(all photos are official U.S. Navy or BIW photos)
Biddle's Nucleus Crew Arrives in Early 1966
Biddle was christened by her sponsor, Mrs. William H. Bates of Salem, Massachusetts, and launched on 2 July 1965. Nine months later, in early 1966, members of the nucleus crew began arriving. Biddle’s first NTDS Officer, Lieutenant Robert Gerity, was the first officer to report aboard when he arrived in February. Fresh from duty as instructor and division head at NTDS School at Mare Island, California, and, before that, CIC Officer at Dam Neck, Virginia, Lieutenant Gerity assumed duties as Acting Prospective Commanding Officer (PCO) and NTDS Officer. He remembers that “she was frozen in ice and had puddles of ice in interior compartments that were opened to the outside. The superstructure was unpainted and cables were strung everywhere. I was fortunate to have a good friend in DLG-32 (Standley, tied next to Biddle) who was able to help me get oriented.”
Lieutenant Gerity had served in one other new construction ship less than six years before and was well prepared to tackle the problems encountered at BIW. The administrative workload was heavy. Lieutenant Gerity continues: “The nucleus crew had to learn a lot about Builder’s Trials (BT) and Preliminary Acceptance Trials (PAT), the trial card system (a list of deficiencies), who does what at Naval Ship Systems Command (NAVSHIPS) and the Type Commanders staff. There is only the school of hard knocks for that. I was very fortunate to have some talented people to help me during this period, such as DSC Dave Johnson, whom I had the foresight to Shanghai when I got my orders to Biddle. I was especially pleased by the high quality technicians we got ordered in, both ET’s and DS’s.”
When I reported aboard a few weeks later, Lieutenant Gerity exclaimed, “Congratulations, Petty Officer Treadway, you are the first enlisted man to report aboard.” Well, it turns out, maybe not. Thirty four years later, at Biddle’s first “All Hands” reunion, DC Chief George Rochefort claimed that when he reported aboard, no one was at the nucleus crew headquarters at BIW, so he took some time off to locate housing. Meanwhile, I had reported aboard and submitted my orders, thus becoming the first enlisted man to “officially” report aboard even though George may have arrived first. Soon, the trickle became a steady downpour and the pool of sailors swelled to fill the billets.
Biddle’s first commanding officer, Captain Maylon Truxtun Scott, a descendant of Revolutionary War naval
officer Thomas Truxtun, reported aboard as PCO in June 1966. A 1943 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and a World War II combat veteran, Captain Scott had previously commanded USS Otterstetter (DER-244) and USS Mitscher (DL-2). Captain Scott, a destroyer man for his entire career, was well suited for the formidable task before him – transform a lifeless steel and aluminum vessel brimming with the latest weapons and computers into a high tech fighting machine and then take that vessel into combat in a very short period of time. Even before receiving his orders to Biddle he was working to form the team that would be the nucleus crew. By the time he reported aboard he had chosen “Hard Charger” as Biddle‘s call sign, forgoing the opportunity to choose “Great Scott.” Soon after his arrival at BIW, Captain Scott’s “Can do” attitude was firmly embedded in the ship’s structure which resulted in Biddle being able to complete a rigorous shakedown training in record time and then depart for combat operations in the Gulf of Tonkin (GOT) one year and one day after commissioning.
Under Captain Scott’s direction, Biddle’s nucleus crew established a solid foundation for future crews – a foundation based on attention to detail, preparation, teamwork, and technical prowess. Biddle’s exemplary 27-year career was constructed on that foundation. One officer remembered that Captain Scott “knew more about people and how to effectively manage and motivate them than any other commanding officer I ever knew. That was a quality that no one else could have provided and probably the single, essential key to most of Biddle’s success. He is, and remains, an amazing, contradictory, odd, corny, sophisticated, marvelously successful officer. That's another book.” The same officer went on to say “There were some unusual (compared to other ships I served in) dynamics among this crew as, for a period of the entire year following commissioning, no one left [the ship.] In retrospect, some very astute personnel management techniques were employed to take advantage of this situation and permit the full sweep of the considerable talent among us to focus on tasks up the track. This approach made all the difference.”
Lieutenant Commander Fred Howe, Biddle’s first Weapons Officer, captured the spirit of the time:
The first recollection I have of Biddle was seeing her from the Kennebec River Bridge at Bath. It was my first
trip over to Bath from Brunswick where I had checked into the BOQ earlier in the afternoon and I was not familiar with the exit for the Iron Works. By the time I realized my error I was past the point of no return and on the bridge. I shot a quick glance down to my right; there she was, with the huge numerals “34” on her bow. My heart must have skipped a beat - it was just breathtaking. When I got down to yard level later, the impression was even more overpowering. My previous ships were Gearing class destroyers and a minesweeper. Biddle was about four times the size of the destroyers and, because the ship was essentially empty then, without fuel, water, ammunition, stores or crew, she was floating well above designed waterline. Lying alongside the pier at the northern end of the yard, the ship simply dominated the skyline in that part of Maine. It was almost surreal: how could this apparently tiny collection of shops and buildings have created such an enormous, magnificent ship? I was in awe.
Those of us who were members of the nucleus crew would discover over the next several months that the modest building facility known as the Bath Iron Works was home to the world’s finest shipbuilders. When one of our sister ships was grounded in Boston that fall the BIW workers were livid that someone had damaged “their” ship. It was an example of the pride that we saw displayed continually, right through the day they delivered the ship to us in Boston, sweeping and swabbing every deck and carrying ashore with them every scrap of trash that had accumulated on the ride down from Bath. BIW had delivered us a clean ship and it was clear to each of us that they expected it to stay that way.
Ensign Peter Trump, Biddle’s first Sonar Officer, remembers another officer who made many positive contributions to Biddle: “Another advantage for Biddle was the inclusion of Lieutenant Bob Carr in ship’s company. Bob was assigned to the Superintendent of Shipbuilding, Bath, and had overseen the installation of combat systems in several of the ships of the class. Due for re-assignment, he decided to leave with Biddle as the Missile Systems Officer so he had added incentive to make sure everything was done right! After leaving Biddle, Bob went on to create the first Naval Shipyard Combat Systems Office at Philadelphia Naval Shipyard.”
By June, most electronic equipment had been installed and was being methodically tested even though not all spaces had electrical power. Shore-powered droplights were common throughout the ship. Occasionally, the blinding light and poisonous smoke generated by a welder making last minute changes filled a space. Many deck plates that covered false decks in spaces such as Combat Information Center (CIC) were removed, exposing both the arteries that pumped life-giving electric power to lifeless electronic equipment and the synaptic connections that allowed the ship’s brains to see, hear, comprehend, and respond.
Biddle still belonged to BIW. Consequently, the nucleus crew was not allowed to touch equipment that would soon be their responsibility. We were allowed to observe and ask questions, however. This opportunity was not wasted – I personally visited all of Biddle’s spaces, including weapons and communications spaces that would soon be off limits to general traffic. As a result, I learned how the ship was built, where things were, how cables were routed, and how equipment was secured. This knowledge would soon become important when, under the pressure of combat operations, malfunctioning equipment had to be quickly repaired under difficult conditions. Lieutenant Gerity recalled that
All of the nucleus crew officers had the responsibility to keep track of their equipment and spaces, what BIW was doing, and prepare proposed trial cards for the Board of Inspection and Survey. If a problem went undetected, it would become your problem later. I don't recall that in the electronics area we had many problems.
Captain Scott was in charge all the way from Newport, even before he had orders. We would let him know of any kind of problem such as a tech needing a change of orders, or some perceived construction problem and he would fire out priority messages from Newport. Those often annoyed the recipient since MTS (Captain Scott) would send them Friday afternoon and they would have to be acted on Saturday.
A shipyard is an interesting place to visit - especially a shipyard with a strong reputation for quality such as BIW. Scattered over the BIW complex of piers, dry docks, and cavernous buildings, were several ships in various stages of construction. They ranged from almost completed ships such as Biddle and Standley to skeletons with little more than a keel in dry-dock. Standley was commissioned on 9 July 1966.
Occasionally I wandered around BIW on errands or to learn more about shipbuilding. In one long, skinny building, I found machinists turning long, skinny stainless steel propeller shafts on giant lathes. A lathe operator confided that it takes many months to turn a propeller shaft from stock material. If the machinist who is turning a propeller shaft dies, the shaft is scrapped and a new one is started. Only the machinist knows all the peculiarities and imperfections of a particular shaft and a shaft must be perfectly balanced. The story sounds credible…
The workforce and effort required to build as many as six ships at one time, piece by piece, is incredible. Michael Sanders, in The Yard, described BIW employees building the USS Donald Cook (DDG-75) as “To the more than five thousand electricians, pipefitters, welders, braziers, tinknockers, riggers, anglesmiths, straighteners, blasters, and shipfitters who labored out on the deckplate to put it together piece by piece, and to the legions of naval architects, draftsmen, and marine engineers who designed its parts and supervised its construction, it is Hull 463, the four hundred and sixty third to slide down the ways of Bath Iron Works since the yard’s founding in 1884 by an ambitious local named Thomas Worcester Hyde, a Civil War general and Medal of Honor winner.” (Sanders x)
Sanders described the physical plant from the Carlton Bridge over the Kennebec River as, “Viewed this way, from end to end, the yard resembles a child’s erector set, a toy city left out in a jumble on the playroom floor at bedtime, all odd angles and thrusting fingers of steel, on the ground barely discernable everyday objects – a stake-bed truck, 55-gallon drums, a pile of steel pipe, wooden beams lying in a tangled heap. Closer in, there is an order to this chaos. BIW runs from the foot of the bridge down the waterfront about a mile and a half out towards the edge of town, but penetrates back from the shore only narrowly, with two-story houses and storefronts of Washington Street butting right up against its back.” (viiii)
The Bath-Brunswick area of Maine provided many opportunities for a young sailor to see the sights. (After all, that’s one of the reasons we joined the Navy, isn’t it?) In the fall, when the autumn leaves were at their most colorful, I went flying in a small plane with shipmate DS2 Matt Lewis. Mesquite leaves and prickly pear don’t change their color in West Texas, so the fall change of colors was spectacular to me. When I learned that the scoutmaster from my Boy Scout troop in San Angelo, Texas, was living in Rockland, Maine, I took a Greyhound bus for a weekend visit. I was rewarded with an impressive aurora borealis at night, authentic Maine lobster, and a day of sailing in Rockport Harbor in a two-masted schooner built by hand from timber cut from a nearby island.
By the fall of 1966, my brother, BT fireman Ray Treadway, received orders to report to Biddle. Ray had been serving in the rusty WWII repair ship USS Jason (AR-8) in San Diego and was very happy to get orders to a brand new guided missile frigate. The congressman from our district, who was a member of the House Armed Services Committee, had pulled some strings to get Ray assigned to Biddle, much to the disgust of Jason’s commanding officer.
I eventually moved off base from Brunswick NAS to a room in Bath that was conveniently located one block from BIW. One night I was playing poker with an old Maine Indian named Paul who also rented a room in the house. A hand was dealt; Paul picked up his cards, looked at them, let a loud fart, and died of a heart attack on the spot. We never did look at his hand – it may have been a good one – or maybe a really bad one. Even though it happened very late at night, there was a statement for the ambulance service in his mailbox early the next morning.
Ensign Trump recalls the housing situation for some of the nucleus crew officers: “Several of the officers found housing in neighboring Brunswick, Maine near the Naval Air Station. Bob Gerity, Wes Boer and I were there and were soon joined by Fred Howe. At the time I drove a Volvo P1800 coupe, essentially a two-seater. In the spirit of the times, we car-pooled often. When it was my turn to drive, it was amazing to see Fred Howe, a big man, fold himself into the cramped rear “seat” of the Volvo!”
Builder's Trials, PAT and Delivery
As Biddle neared completion in the fall of 1966, preparations began for Builder’s Trials. The nucleus crew was invited, but only as observers. Due to tides, Biddle’s
first cruise down the Kennebec River to the open waters of Casco Bay required us to be aboard well before daylight – 4 or 5 AM, as I remember. At the appointed time, tugs nudged Biddle from the outfitting pier and she began the cautious journey down the twisting Kennebec River. This was my first cruise ever, so I had no idea what to expect. BIW employees masquerading as Navy cooks served breakfast on the mess deck - the meal was outstanding. Lieutenant Gerity fondly recalled, “I will always remember heading down the Kennebec for the first time, hoping everything would work OK, and marveling at all the old civilian farts running things.”
The cruise was uneventful, as we had hoped. Preliminary Acceptance Trials, which allow Navy representatives to check out the final product, followed in a few weeks. The following photos of Biddle were taken during one or both cruises. After acceptance, the Balance Crew joined the Nucleus Crew then the ship entered a short Fitting Out Availability period, the last major hurdle before commissioning.
BIW delivered Biddle to the Navy at the Boston Naval Shipyard on 10 January 1967. The Portland Press Herald reported that “The six-hour cruise from Bath to Boston was a frigid, but smooth trip, attended by colorful (nautical) costumes, business meetings, guided tours, submarine sightings, and curiosity” (Langley 1). The submarine, according to the article, was the USS Jack (SSN-605) on her first sea trials. Jack was on her way back to Kittery Shipyard with Vice Admiral Hyman G. Rickover on board. The article also reported that 50 BIW women employees, who represented approximately 50% of all women employees at BIW at the time, made the trip. Allegedly, one of the women briefly took the wheel.
Ensign Trump recalled that Biddle had some work done on the sonar dome about that time:
Somewhere in that sequence, the ship sailed to Boston for a brief dry-docking in the South Yard of Boston Naval Shipyard to groom the sonar dome. Biddle’s dome was a rigid stainless steel dome, not the rubber dome of later designs. It could be pumped out and entered from a trunk without maintaining a positive internal pressure. The sonar array consisted of eight stacked rings of seventy-two elements each or 576 elements in all. The array hung from the forward end of the keel. Together with the dome, it drastically increased the draft of the ship. The access trunk contained a vertical ladder several decks tall. At the base, a small watertight hatch provided access to the dome. It was not ventilated and in most climates the condensation formed a rain forest effect. Effective preservation was impossible; rust was rife from the beginning.
