Break away music is played over the IMC when the ship is pulling away from the oiler after getting refueled. When the last line was sent back across to the oiler we would start to play loud music and then increase speed and make a sharp turn away from the oiler. Since we almost always refueled with the carrier we would make a sharp turn to starboard, right.

The music could be just about anything that the crew had in their personal collections. Most commands will allow any song that you would hear on the radio. The choice is normally made by one of the regular bridge crew and is approved by the captain.

We were lucky and our captain was a decent guy he normally picked the song fro us and would choose classic rock songs and even some of the newer music that was out in 1991. That’s classic music now to some people.

We also would play music when coming along side the oiler. That was called approach music, for obvious reasons. Most ships chose some thing with long introduction music. We used the song from “Jaws” a good deal of the time.

Even though refueling at sea can be a dangerous event the Navy still likes to have fun. When ships had their own bands on them the bad would play the music. Now they just pop in a CD and play it loud.