Jim Flot, 1951- 54

Jim Flot Joins the Navy

Jim Flot was one of a contingent of recruits from Colorado that arrived at San Diego’s Naval Training Center—Boot Camp—during the last week of December 1950. He and the others from Colorado were assigned to Company 614, one of several Companies formed on the 28th of that month. The Center was operating at near maximum capacity, as the number of recruits in training had surged with the outbreak of hostilities in Korea six months earlier. The notes and photos that follow record events during Jim’s first 18 months in the Navy.

Upon completing boot-camp training in March, Jim along with most of Company 614 was ordered to report for duty aboard the heavy cruiser USS ROCHESTER, then undergoing a major overhaul at Mare Island Naval Shipyard in northern California. Among the other Colorado recruits going to ROCHESTER were Gary Boyer and Reuben Grauberger.

Whatever aspirations the new sailors may have had regarding shipboard duties, they were scattered among the Deck Divisions and put to work with paint chipper/scrapers. This uninspired labor sharpened their anticipation for liberty at workday’s end. And being among strangers in an unfamiliar setting, they answered liberty call during their first month or so on board by joining with friends from boot camp.

Boot-camp friendships tended to fade once a niche in the Ship’s Company had been established. Of the three from Colorado identified above, Jim became a Fire Controlman in Fox Division, Boyer a Signalman in CS Division and Grauberger a Radioman in CR Division. For some time after he had buckled down to become a Fire Controlman, however, Jim continued to spend time ashore with some he had known in boot camp.

ROCHESTER completed the overhaul in May and steamed south to Long Beach, her Home Port. The months that followed involved gunnery exercises off southern California to prepare the crew for a November return to the Korean War.

During a weekend in port at San Diego, Jim and three of his Company 614 shipmates crossed the border into Mexico and visited Tijuana, their first foreign port-o-call. With Jim in the two photos below are A. Cox, W. Hellyer and T. Hobson.

Persistent summer overcast along the California coast caused repeated delays in the gunnery exercises. To ensure readiness for the scheduled return to Korea, ROCHESTER was sent westward in August--two months early--to complete the exercises under clear skies of the Hawaiian Islands.

Although gunnery exercises at sea consumed most of ROCHESTER’s two months in the Islands, there was ample opportunity for time ashore. In the photo, left, Jim and Art Cox survey the scene at Ke’ehi Beach, a favored destination for swimming now buried beneath a runway of the greatly expanded Honolulu International Airport. On the right, Jim drains a coconut for breakfast on the beach at Waikiki. This was after a night when a ping-pong table on the grounds of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel had enabled his only sleep.

ROCHESTER returned to action in Korea late in November. Jim’s action station during his first year on board was as operator of the director controlling fire from the portside 40 mm mount on the fantail. This mount can be seen to the left of the crane in the photo below, left. The center photo shows Jim pulling a cover over the director and on the right he is exiting the station in foul-weather gear.

During the bitter cold of that first Korean winter, Jim and others charged with directing fire from the 40 mm batteries spent more time in the 40-mm repair shop than at their stations topside. In the photo below left, Jim (2nd from l) is preparing to venture up into the weather, while the others (l-r), R. Collins, B. Land and Dyment, seem content to remain in the warm shop. Jim and his pipe can be seen in the center photo, while in the foreground is Alva Donalson, who, though a cook, gained regular visitor status by arriving at the shop with trays of cakes, pies or cookies. The only one that appears to be working here is Chief Oleskowitz (upper right), but, in fact, his intense concentration here is directed at repairing his wristwatch.

That Tour of Korean duty alternated a month or so in the war zone with seven to 10 days in Japan—usually Yokosuka, but sometimes Sasebo. Both were lively liberty ports very unlike anything Jim had known at home in Colorado.

ROCHESTER was relieved of WestPac duties with the arrival of JUNEAU on 21 April 1952 and almost immediately headed stateside. Jim would be in ROCHESTER for two more WestPac tours, but never again as a kid learning the ropes. To new recruits reporting aboard he would from now on be a Fox-Division old-timer, a guy that had been there, done that.