Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 19:37:20 -0500 To: Mark Roberts From: Carl Lenz Subject: P&S Mark; Those are good cartoons. Rich; My wife had me run off a copy of "the slave" only she wanted it as large as the sheet of white paper it was to be copied on. No problem ( after a wee bit of testing)--she is hanging it up where she works. She types on a computer all day. Medical records at the local hospital. I've got to send you a picture but have not decided which one. This is the second day for my new glasses and are they a pain, the old standby (you will get used to them) I hate it when they say that. I also hate this picture of me in front of the dual 5" mount. That is the gun that darned near blew me over the side, on one other occasion a kid from Miss was walking guard, by this gun, when they fired it, Don't know to this day if he really knew what happened, it just flatened him. They used to have guards around the ship when we were in Wonsan Harbor, suspected the "enemy" might swim out and board us, or row out. This is the mount that fired a round every 11 min day and night (at a railroad Jct) in Wonsan. My bunk was fastened to the turret, top bunk, so I got the full benefit of every shot. I moved to another sack as soon as one opened up. The other photo is of a kid from Kentucky, thats a quad 40mm he is setting at or on, this kid sang the song, "I wanna go home", quite often. Good guy. More later. Carl Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 04:57:42 -0500 From: Carl Lenz Subject: reply to 5" guns Rich; Mark had asked if the 5" mount was forward or aft, it is aft on the fantail. The paint, on the barrels, was burnt to a crisp after our Wonsan encounter. When entering our "Home Port" ,in Japan, I was standing under them with my ego soaring--seems a little goofy now--but when you are 18 and been through what we had been through--doesn't seem so goofy. We still had moments of just trying to act like the kids, that we were. This attachment, for example, as you can see the protective canvas covers are on the barrels, there is another twin mount, just out of the picture, as this is a quad 40mm. Yours truly is the one with his hand up to his pot, looking at what????? Strickly a posed shot. More later. Carl

Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 20:43:00 -0500
From: Carl Lenz
Subject: reply

Rich; Acknowledging page 2, that last photo seems a little blurred, will check my copy. Sending an attached photo of the 20mm guns on our fantail. They installed these, after our first "go-round" in Korea. They didn't work out all that well. First off, when mount 53 opened up it blew the "Mark 14" sites all out of wack, breaking the glass in them, then secondly, if you were manning these weapons, and the ship was maneuvering to avoid incoming shells, you could get very wet, so they were removed much to our delight because we did a lot of R&R on the fantail. These 20's were in a cluster like a three leaf clover, and they did put up the protective shield around them with the barrel cooling tubes attached. You don't see that protective shield in the photo, it was installed a little later. They were used very little, but did look impressive. None of us hated to see them go.

Thanks again for all the effort you are putting into this venture.

Carl

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