Weapons the teeth of any Naval ship. Our ship carried many different weapons, 5” guns, missile launchers, CWIS, torpedoes, and an ASW helo. We also carried a fair amount of small arms for boarding parties and I suppose to repel anyone attempting to board us. The weapons guys were always training while we were at sea. The conducted drills every day with the main guns and missile launchers.
As I had mentioned before when the missile launchers were being used fro training blue missiles would be used. These pretended to be live missiles and could tell the guys in combat if the had done everything correct or not. Pretty much everyone referred to the missiles as birds. Either blue birds or white birds on the rail. White birds are war shot. You use these either to shoot at a drone or when you want to impress upon the people who can see you that you mean business. While I was on board we only put white birds on the rail a few times. Mostly it was for live fire training, but there was the one time we had to prove we meant it when we told a ship to stop.
We carried Harpoon missiles, which are for anti-shipping, and Standard SM-2 Block 2 Missiles. These could be used for anti-air, anti-ship, or anti-missile. Today the Navy is working on a version that can be used against ballistic missiles. We never did fire any of the Harpoon, but we did fire off a few SM-2s. These were all against our mortal enemy, the drones off Puerto Rico. We you fire at a drone you are not supposed to hit them, they are expensive. The idea is it get into the kill box. If this is done, then it is a kill. I would watch them fire off missiles from the top of the helo hangar. This was a pretty safe place to watch, unless it blew up on deck. Missiles are not all that loud when they are launched.
However our 5” main guns were a little noisy when fired. We usually fired them at a small island off Puerto Rico called Vieques. One side of that island was for gunnery and bombing, the other people lived on. There were plenty of targets for us to shoot at on the gunnery side. There were several different types of gun runs so we practiced them a good deal. The guns themselves are unmanned and automatic and fire up to 20 rounds a minute. We never fired that fast, but we could if need be. We would watch from the upper decks of the ship or the amidships section of the main section. One really neat type of fire we did was night illumination, or flares. They were pretty bright and just as loud as an explosive round.
Our CWIS guns were for close support against missiles. It fires 30mm rounds at up to 2000 rounds per minute. Talk about putting some rounds down range. These were tested by pulling a sled past it on a mile long cable. The weapon would lock on the sled and shot at it. It is hard to say what one of these sounds like firing, but it is a sound you only want to hear in practice. Our aft mount had a habit of actually cutting the cable on the sleds. I think they actually shot 3 sleds down while I was on board.
The helo and torpedo launchers were meant for submarines. After all a destroyer is out there to kill subs if need be. I do not recall us ever shooting a live torpedo while I was on board. We did shot plenty of air slugs. That is noting more than shotting compressed air out of the tubes. We also carried ASROCs, Anti-submarine rocket assisted torpedo. We shot these like a missile so we could drop a surprise on a sub from many miles away. We shot one of these at one of our submarines for practice. The sub was farther away than the ASROC was aimed so is landed between us and the sub. The seeker head picked us up and started to come after us. A friend of mine was lookout on the bridge at the time. The captain was standing next to him watching the test. The torpedo hit the water and turned back at us. My friend saw this while looking through his binoculars. He elbowed the captain and pointed at the wake of the torpedo. It never came close to us because it did not have much fuel onboard.
During my whole time in the Navy I only shot one gun. I had told this to a Marine friend and he joked it was probably shooting skeet off the fan tail of the ship. He was right! One Sunday we were having a steel beach picnic on our flight deck. The grills were cooking hot dogs, brats, and burgers. The cooks had plenty of fresh made buns ready and all the fix ens for a day long gluttony fest. The gunners mates were having a skeet shooting contest on the fan tail. So I went down to shoot at my ten clay pigeons. I was a pretty good shot when ti came to a shot gun and clay pigeons, we spent plenty of weekends in Illinois practicing for the up coming pheasant season. I ended up going ten for ten. So the only weapon I actually fired during my military service was a Remington 870 while off the coast of Columbia shooting hostile clay pigeons.
We also had several .50 cal stands located around the ship and actually had weapons on those while in the Red Sea while stopping ships heading to Aqaba Jordon. During our time there was the only time we actually had any major problems. Two Israeli F-16's came out to visit us without the aid of having their IFF transponders turned on. So we came close to shooting them down before we knew who they were. Then a ship full of benzine refused to listen to our demands they turn around and go back to their port of origin. So we pulled all the helos behind us, went to GQ, put white birds on the rails and told them to leave or be fired upon. They listened and turned around.
Ships today have better weapons than we carried 15 years ago and they will only get better.
One of the test missiles we fired. It is hard to get a picture of shooting one of these, they are fast!
One of the ASROCs we fired. These are a little slower taking off so are easier to get pictures of.
