 The mail must get through, mail from home, nourishment for the soul, half a world away from their hometown, a nourished soul is not enough. We must have ships on the line and crews to man them, but more than this, we must move food and equipment to these ships and men at their distant ocean addresses. These men need fresh vegetables and meat. On an aircraft carrier, 10 tons of groceries every day. Their ships need fuel oil, their aircraft need replacement parts, and their guns need ammunition. Today, with our Navy engaged in a hot war thousands of miles from our shores, the oil pipeline and the track for the supply train must be stretched to new dimensions in Southeast Asia. Tomorrow, we hope there will be no battle tomorrow. The Navy's job is to take the strength of America wherever it's needed, not always to fight, thank God, usually to promote peace by making new friends and working side by side with allies. An aircraft carrier task force by only being in the North Atlantic or the Mediterranean or the Taiwan Straits is a kind of insurance against battle. No supermarket down the street, no gas station around the corner. It's a long way to the shopping center from here. Wherever on the world's oceans, our ships must be the gas station, the department store, the hardware, and the grocery must go with them. For the supply fleet in the Gulf of Tonkin, this is a large order. The rendezvous address has been agreed on and unmarked crossroads among the waves. Let's come right, of course. 320, Speed 10 knots. Keeping the task force on the job starts at Sous-City, Amarillo, and San Bernardino. In It's all the cities and towns across the nation where the products of an abundant economy are grown or manufactured or taken from the earth. The Navy and, well, Pacific Fleet sailors do get around. Many seaside bases serve as warehouses for the fleet. Okinawa, Guam, Subic Bay. For the war in Vietnam, Subic Bay in the Philippines is the shopping center. Only two days steaming time from the Gulf of Tonkin. Every time you turn around here, there's another ship from the states to be unloaded. Or a ship riding high back from Vietnam ready to be loaded out again. Yankee station, here they come. The idea of taking supplies to ships at sea and handing them across the water was new to the Navy at the turn of the century. Sailing ships had been able to stay where the action was for weeks or months. Sea breezes provided the power. Sailor's diets were less complex and round shot was more easily stocked than bombs and missiles. Then came the day of the steamship with its huge appetite for coal. Large men of war burned 50 tons of coal a day and to keep their bunkers full had to return to port every 10 days or so to recole. The Navy learned a lesson in 1898 during the Spanish-American War. The Spanish fleet was blockaded in the harbor at Santiago, Cuba. When the Spaniards made a run for the open sea, three of our ships, including the old battleship Massachusetts, were 45 miles away being recold at Guantanamo. The need for on-station at sea refueling was obvious. Early efforts to solve the problem led to the development of a high line for carrying bags of coal from a collier to a warship, one in the wake of the other. World War I saw the beginning of the Navy's conversion to oil burning ships and soon the colliers were out of business. All right, when this whip, which is on the sending ship, is heaved around on, it will pick the load up in the air, hide up the clear to bulwark. Go ahead and pick it up. It took the pressure of the Second World War on the Pacific, a war that reached into the far corners of that ocean, to make underway replenishment a regular feature of naval operations. Americans, with their ingenuity for things mechanical, worked out several ways to do the job. Now let's go back to this third rig, which is called the Houseball Rig. It is rigged much the same as the Burton Rig, the first rig we talked about. The whip is heaved around on, which will lift your load clear of the deck. Your outhaul is heaved around on, which will start your load outboard. Bring it across. Your inhaul is slacked off, which will give your load to canton area again. One whip is slacked off, the other one heaved around. When you get to the other ship, the receiving ship, you'll be right over the elevator of any other landing platform you have. Both whips have to be slacked off. All right, does anybody have any questions on this rig? Approximately how far apart are these ships and what would happen if there were a power casualty? Usually the ships steam not more than 200 feet apart. If a power casualty happens and it's something that will affect the rudder or the steering of some type, if the power casualty causes us to swerve on either one ship or the other, it's real drastic. You'll probably part all the rigs before you can initiate an emergency breakaway. The war in the Pacific made new demands on the Navy. We had the fighting ships and men, but our new mobility meant that the supply lines had to be extended quickly in order to project our power across the oceans and keep it there. This is Commodore Leon Grabowski, replenishment group commander in the South China Sea. Back in World War II and in Korea, the combatant forces would retire from the scene of operations to conduct their resupply. In the Vietnam operation, the supply comes to the combatants they remain on station. If it's a carrier, he may be engaged in their operations. Regardless of what he's doing, he needs his supplies, whether it be fuel or ammunition, delivered right across the operations. The hazards to the service force ships are just as great as they are to the other ships. The USS Constellation 4,000 hard-working crewmen pass through her chow lines three times every day. People remember, under no circumstances I want any skyrocket on this station. If anything goes wrong, let me know about it. Remember, we'll be working the hatches at the same time so they'll be swinging loads. Keep up between the load, the fuel work, and the open hatch. This is extra important, keep your feet out of the bottom of the line. You got your phone line, you're messing with your throttle. Make sure you keep your feet out of them. Any questions? How many loads are we going to send over there? 17 loads to send over. Two inch operators, you'll change the rigs during the ship. Rest your men, get your lines ready, down and all set for running. Anything else? All right, men, here she comes. Let's go. For every trip from the United States, the USS Vega comes loaded with hundreds of foods to keep those chow lines moving. 25 tons of bacon, almost two million eggs, more than 130,000 steaks, enough to keep the Constellation crew fed for more than six months. This is automation, electronic inventory control by computer. What makes this control room unusual is that it operates on a ship at sea, the USS Mars. The Navy calls it a combat store ship, but it's more like a supermarket. A thorough shopper could find refrigerated food, dry foods, all kinds of supplies, and a warehouse full of spare parts for almost anything the Navy uses in this part of the world. This is Captain H. Riley, Jr., commanding officer of the Mars. Mars handles ships alongside both sides, as do other replenishment ships. But Mars also has the H-46 Sea Knight helicopter, and this instrument allows Mars to replenish an entire task group at the same time. Normally the heavy will be alongside on the port side, receiving the normal underway replenishment. At the same time, these two helicopters carrying loads in excess of one and a half to two tons rapidly can replenish the entire screen, for instance, carry a task force. Destroyers not having to come off station to come alongside it off. Uh, Joe, let us know how much time I want for a cargo landing. Well, there's not much, Joe, it's pretty, really, uh... No transplants at all. We've got about 60 pellets or more, and we've got about 20 left. Within the ballpark, about the same time for the Hornet as for a small voyage. That's an hour early enough for a flight boarder, so you want more. We will have two birds, and this way it will give you about 10 lifts per helo for approximately 30 minutes. Every single bird rip, uh, we all try to make our pickup smoother and better and make our drops quicker. Sometimes a long day of this flying can be rather tiring because of the concentration involved. The hook on the UH-46 is about 20-25 feet behind the pilot's seat, which is a long way back for you to be aware exactly where that hook is at all times. When you come in over a deck for a picker, you line up the spot in front of you and pass over it from then on the crewman, who is laying in the back by the hook, looking down through the hatch, directs you right or left. You also have a signal director on the deck usually who's giving you signs to tell the crewman we're going in for a pickup. He says, Roger, I have the deck in sight, and then he says, easy forward and down. And you come in and then he'll say, easy right, easy down, we have a hook up, up, up, easy right, up, easy back, mark, which means the weight's coming on, and then loads clear, you're clear to go. Helicopters can pass the bacon or the ammunition when the seas are too rough for a highline. The Navy is finding that it has developed its supply techniques so well that it must now look for ways to help ships stow the huge amounts of supplies they receive. Like the housewife who can buy almost everything she needs at a modern supermarket, a ship on the line can make one visit to the Mars and come away with enough food and supplies to last three weeks. When the tempo of operations demands round the clock schedules, supply ships play a variation on their theme, night replenishment. You put a 3,500 pound load under a helicopter. You pick it up at night, and you fly out off the ship, and you get over the black water between your ship and the other ship, and you can't see anything, and you look at your gauges and everything of course is pitching because the ship swings when they put that load under you, and the load will be spinning or going back and forth. And you get the weirdest sensations. It's akin to vertigo, I'd say. And I'd say that some of the hairiest flying that I've ever had to do is flying at night with a heavy load under me. That part of it is more excitement than I care for. The Navy has come a long way since the days of Mr. Roberts and the USS Reluctant. The newest trick in the service force bag of ships is one which will carry the beans, the bullets, and the black oil. Here at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, the third ship of a new type is readied for her launching day. Nearly twice the size of her older cousins, she will carry more fuel than any oiler and more ammunition than most ammunition ships, and groceries and clothing, office supplies and hardware too. But until there are enough of these seagoing shopping centers, most Navy ships will continue to pay regular visits to the oilers, ammunition ships, and provision ships. Many of these ships have been in service since World War II. The unsung ladies of the Pacific Fleet. For want of a nail, wrote Ben Franklin, the war was lost. The job of Service Group 3 in the Western Pacific is to make sure that the Navy's war in Vietnam is not lost for the want of even a case of ammunition. She adds nuclear ships to its fleet. It will slowly outgrow its thirst for black oil. But carrier jets will still need jet fuel and jets have big appetites. If automobile gasoline were being pumped through this hose, one minute's worth would take your car from New York to San Francisco ten times. Navy men will never outgrow their need for fresh vegetables and meat, and mail from home. Wherever in the world they stand their duty, the fleet that can deliver anything, anywhere, will find them.