The crash and smash crew are those sailors who are on station during a landing of aircraft onboard ship. They are primarily damage control persons but also included is a corpsman and some type of ordinance person. Also present on each landing was the refueling crew. Since our ship only carried a helo our team was fairly small, but none the less ready to take on any problem.

The team practiced taking care of a crashed helo a good deal and knew what to do to get it taken care of. The fueling crew was there to refuel the helo when needed and had no actual cross over to damage control. As a matter of fact the refueling crew could cause more trouble than they prevented just by being there.

Since I was on the fueling crew I had to attend crash and smash school with the remainder of the team. While in the class room section of the school the entire team was told “Nobody here knows their job if that bird crashed.” I told the instructor I knew exactly what I had to do if that were the case. He asked me what that was, and my reply was to stop the JP5 pump and close to main supply valve. Needless to say he was not happy with my reply.

The training ended with us putting out a large fire and after that we officially passed the training. It was very important to pass due to the fact we were leaving for our Med Cruise on Monday and this was Friday. The crash and smash crew was a well trained group of people and they did work together as a unit. For the extra duty we received an extra $110 per month. Some people were on the crew for this reason, others of use because we had to be on the team.