During my tour on the USS Caron, part of my time was spent serving as the division Damage Control Petty Officer. As the DCPO it was my responsibility to make sure that all the fire stations, battle lanterns, CO2 bottles, and Air/Water tight doors were working and properly maintained.

Well, the Water tight door that led out to the O-3 Level was anything but water tight. The Spruance class Destroyer was a little over 500 feet in length and about 55 feet wide at amidships. A ship that big is not rigid, but has flex points along the length to allow it to bend and twist in the water. This keeps it from snapping in two when the seas are rough.

Anyway, because of all the twisting and flexing, the water tight door to the O-3 level was warped as qwerty and wouldn't shut right.

What makes a water tight door, water tight is a knife edge and thick rubber gasket that runs around the edge of the door. Then there are a number of clamps called "dogs" that are distributed around the perimeter of the door and are attached to a long handle. When you lock the handle down it turns all the dogs and seals the door.

To test that a door is sealing properly, you rub chalk along the entire knife edge, then dog the door down completely. Reopen the door and look at the gasket, any spot along the gasket that doesn't have chalk, you can theoretically adjust the nearest dog to make it close properly.

The door to the O-3 level wasn't having any of that nonsense. That fuker was so out of whack that when it was closed completely, you could see daylight around the edges. I tried every thing I could think of to adjust that door but nothing worked. I finally broke down and told my division Chief that we needed a new door. He told me that we weren't getting a new door and that I need to adjust it. This went on for about two weeks and the door wasn't any closer to getting fixed.

Finally, we were pulling back in to Norfolk, and the Chief told me that if the door wasn't fixed by the time we got into port I wasn't going to be allowed to leave the ship until it was fixed. The Chief's exact words were "I don't care what you have to do. Get that fucking door fixed TODAY."

So I went up to the O-3 level and removed the door completely, took it down to the main deck and threw it over the side of the ship. Then commenced to kill some time.

Later I went back down to CIC and told the Chief that the door was fixed and asked if he wanted to see it. We headed up to the O-3 level, with the Chief in the lead. He walked through the light locker (canvas screens set up to keep light inside the ship from escaping at night) and yelled "Where the fuck is the door!?!?!?" I said "What do you mean?" He turned and yelled "The fuking door is gone!!! Where the fuck is it???"

I looked the Chief square in the eye and with a straight face said "Chief, I swear I don't know what happened to that door. A fuking Sea Monster must of ate it."

The Chief completely lost it at this point and started laughing his ass off and said that it looked like we were going to have to get a new door then and that I should head over to one of the tenders to see if they had one.

I got a new door and it worked great. I am so friggin lucky I got away with that. I could have (and probably should have) gotten put the wringer for that stunt.