We had pulled in to do some creative painting towards the end of the refuel in Bremerton in the late 60's.
Our first victim had been the carrier Ranger. The picture of the #31 (see Picture Page) was the final.
I think the local paper or yard newsletter picked up on it. The Ranger had just come in off line from Vietnam and was really tired. The deck crew had spent a few weeks scraping, priming, and painting her back up. They were completing under the angle deck. We thought it would be great to put a very large set of dolphins on her, sort of a branding.
We did some creative comshaw with a few yard workers and, for a case of steaks, had them leave a docking boat one night for our use. We figured that around 3am the watch would be tired and all would be back from liberty.
At the appointed time a few of us gathered only to find out we didn't have any oars. We pressed a few brooms into service and paddled over to the Ranger. There was still a flat barge under the angle deck for the painting crew so we climbed on and proceeded to paint a set of 15-20' long dolphins in orange primer and returned home undiscovered.
Just as we were getting ready to take in the lines the next day on our way to sea trials, over came a large and very unhappy delegation from the Ranger. It appeared to be all of the duty officers from the previous night, the Master Chief from the deck crew, as well as the Captain. They really wanted to have a "talk" to our Captain.
He listened for a few minutes and then said he had a schedule to keep and had to go to sea. They were not really happy but had no choice.
Out we went on trials. I had topside watch that day and as the top of the sail was crowded I was sitting on the cowling up between the periscopes.
We were going out and the Captain, without even seeing the obvious orange paint on my shoes and jacket (or so I thought) said, "By the way....Nice paint job, Gillen."
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