"That
was a great deployment but as I recall Ambuscade had a bunch of mechanical
issues. We hardly ever saw her as she was constantly being repaired.
When we went to Esquimalt on Vancouver Island Canada she actually
had to go into dry dock. Boy was she fast, what a beautiful ship."
Richard McDonald Donaldson HMS Blake 1978
"to
clear a point up, we never went into a drydock on the '78 trip, what
actually happened was that our starboard gearbox went U/S. we went
alongside in LA and the stokers actually changed part of the gearbox
alongside (this was a first as up to then it was thought that only
the dockyard could do it) and then rejoined the other ships after
they left Esquimalt (however we did get blamed for the punch up there!)"
John
'Bungy' Edwards (Nav's Yeo)
Just
to correct "Big" Bungy we never actually went to LA! WE
first called into Long Beach and berthed outboard of "Leander
" and an RFA (can't remember the name at present) and we underwent
the gearbox repairs later in San Diego!! We also never made Esquimalt
where the rest of the deployment had a big "punch - up"
and we got the blame but we did go to Vancouver where the Cheverton
of "Leander" caught fire half way across the harbour whilst
carrying the mail!
Typical Nav's Yeo never knew where we were!!!
Matt Matthews (then AB(m) - passed LS(M) board in Long Beach and promoted
ALS(M) July 78!!