I had only been at MSD Concord for less than a week. That was not even enough time to have my orders for explosive safety school in Yorktown, VA submitted when a civilian ship came in loaded with military ordnance. We had been on board the previous day and conducted an inch by inch inspection of all of the wire rope that was going to be used for loading and unloading explosive materials to and from the ship.

The next day we were on site just a few minutes after morning quarters were concluded and BMC (E-7) Zoomer said to me, “GooBlatz, you're a qualified boarding officer. Go up to the bridge and conduct an inspection of the bridge.” So, I headed up to the bridge and began an inspection just like I had done numerous times before at the MSO. I pulled out the charts used to navigate the area and checked that they were current in their weekly corrections. I read the bridge log and checked that all of the appropriate legal entries had been made.

While my bridge inspection was going on the longshoremen had moved quickly and rigged the booms for the unloading of cargo, at the same time they had removed the hatch boards from the cargo holds and set them aside on the weather deck. Then they began to unload cargo from the holds, now the weather deck and dock were strewn with cargo laden pallets. On the dock more longshoremen were using forklifts to load the pallets from the ship into waiting box cars that were parked on the pier.

I continued with my bridge inspection checking that all of the navigation lights were working and turned on the 5cm and 10cm navigation radar units. They would require a few minutes to warm up before I could check that they were functioning properly. In the meantime I was checking the bridge level fire stations to ensure that they were properly equipped. I had a recent inspection where a firehose was missing a proper nozzle, the substitute was a wooden plug with a hole drilled through the plug. Not acceptable.

By the time I had finished looking at the fire station and other items enough time had passed for the Nav radar to function properly. I walked over to the radar console and flipped the switch that turned on the rotating antennas for both units. I stuck my head into the visor and began to tune in a good radar picture when my radio erupted. It was Zoomer using language that was not fit for the family hour telling me to turn off the radar because there was HERO on deck.

HERO? I thought to myself, who or what is HERO? I pulled my head out of the visor and walked a few steps to the bridge windows and looked out over the weather deck. All work had stopped. The longshoremen were running and I mean running off of the ship, down the brow, down the pier and toward the shore. The longshoremen on the pier had a head start on their shipboard brothers were already well inland and showed no signs of slowing their sprint.

OH SHIT!!!!!

I still didn’t know what HERO was, but whatever HERO was, it was a truly fucking big deal. I dashed over to the radar console and started flipping switches from the “On” position to the “Off” position. Still not sure what HERO was, I then ran over to the main electrical switch board and started flipping every switch from “On” to “Off”. I then started looking around the bridge for anything else I could shut off; electronic, electrical, steam, hydraulic, gravity, piss powered, anything.

By the time I had made my mad dash around the bridge looking for anything I could turn off Zoomer arrived on the bridge. I had fucked up and I had fucked up has majorly as possible and still live to talk about it. I closed my eyes and waited for the verbal barrage to begin. “GooBlatz” he said in a calm, clear, almost fatherly voice.

I squeezed my eyelids tighter…

“HERO, is high electromagnetic radiation ordnance and the deck is littered with fuses that are detonated by radio waves. Radar just happens to be radio waves in the right spectrum to which the fuses are set too.” He continued on calmly. “In the future please, do not turn on the radar units when we are handling ordnance. I know that is the usual practice anywhere else, but here we don’t. It’s my fault for not having someone up here with you to show you the ropes.”

I was fully prepared for verbal assault from my days at a coastal rescue station in Oregon where the XPO, a BMC (E-7), would go off in a tirade for the smallest error anyone made. BMC (E-7) Shitman would harangue the non-rates threatening them with extra instruction, shitty work details and dismissal from the service. “Your replacement is just a phone call away!” was his favorite line. BMC (E-7) Shitman didn’t spare the Petty Officers either and that lead to a number of complaints to the command and to the Group Captain. The shit you can get away with when you have a Surfman rating code.

A calm, reasoned and well articulated correction of an honest mistake from my BMC was the very last thing I was expecting.

It took about 30 minutes to round up all of the longshoremen and get back to work. At the end of the day I fully expected to have to explain myself to Cdr. (O-5) Shortimer and have a CG Page 7 put into my personnel file, but nothing was ever said. No one was hurt, no one was killed, no property had been lost or damaged and the issue was over. BMC Zoomer was not like BMCShitman and I was and continue to be thankful for it.