Talk:USS Norton Sound

From a sailor on the Norton Sound

This was posted on an e-mail list in reply to a link to this Wikipedia page. Name withheld by request.

That's not a bad little write-up. Of course, the ship was involved in much more. The "AVM-1" hull number reclassification also included renaming as a "Guided Missile Ship". The Navy's first such ship. Missiles and rockets were such a cultural phenomona in the fifties that Revell came out with a Norton Sound kit and the box art showed it launching a missile. Those kits routinely sell for over $300 now!

Later, it was namned a "Weapons Test Platform" and then I think "Missile Test Ship".

The gyroscope they mentioned is a laser gyroscope that is now widely used. It has no moving parts. The principle is ridiculously simple and it's hard to imagine it really works. A laser beam is split and the two beams reflected back to produce an interference pattern at a slit. Ship rotation in an axis parallel to the plane of the beams causes the time it takes for the one beam of light to reach the slit to be a little longer than for the other beam. The effect is that the interference pattern moves. And something can count the light and dark bands with each representing some portion of a degree. They have several sets of these for bearing, pitch, and roll. Dead reckoning input is also needed (as it was with mechanical gyros) to make corrections or the thing would think the ship rotated end over end if you sailed around the world. Or it would think you were turning if not sailing on a "great circle" line. This is all done by computer instead of the zillions of gears and things in the old Sperry gyroscopes. And, for a warship, things tie into it to keep antennas and fire control systems level.

The Typhon system was the first serious sea trial testing of phased array radar. If you look at photos of the early CVN65 Enterprise you see a big domelike structure on top with a lot of little widgets on it. That's very similar to the Typhon system.

The 5"'-54 gun they mentioned, with associated fire control system (Mark 86), was actually part of testing for viability to shoot down supersonic aircraft with special shells. Missiles are expensive, the shells much cheaper. The Sea Sparrow program was a similar budget minded program to use relatively inexpensive missiles and fire control. (By the way, a missile went off second stage first on the fantail once. Not good.)

They didn't go into any detail on ECM equipment, not surprisingly. But much of it is unclassified now like the "All Band Intercept Receiver". Let's just say that some was passive and some active and the active could cause your enemy to see and hear all sorts of things that weren't really there, as one example. I don't know the current state of the art, but I imagine it's far ahead of whoever is in second place.

Some of the work was raw research, but most of it was sea trial testing before deployment to the fleet. That's why they wanted good officers and crew in the technical areas to work with the civilian contracters. But since the ship typically just went out for day and drove around and came back late in the afternoon, it didn't need top people in those areas.

There are some other tidbits the Wikipedia didn't mention...

In it's later years, it was one of the first Navy ships to have women officers (4) and women enlisted (70).

It had some drug scandals. And it had some lesbian scandals where the Navy charged some women and later dropped the charges. Parade magazine ran an article "Ship of Shame" in their Nov 9, 1980 issue discussing the Navy's treatment of those women. An unfortunate footnote.

There's much more on the Letters section of the unofficial website. http://www.ussnortonsound.com/A/html/letters.htm —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.136.145.228 (talk • contribs) . 10:03, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Maritime Terminology?

Under WWII, what does 'stood out' mean? This warrants replacement with a term that the average landlubber would comprehend.LorenzoB 16:06, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Museum ship?

How come this did not ever become a museum ship? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Clrichey (talk • contribs) 03:47, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

More tidbits - interest

Reading the "From a sailor on the Norton Sound" section - Could the ship have been the test ship for the SLQ-32 EW Suite? Why did never become a museum ship- Probably not much interest at the time - - pretty certain Navy would have stripped out all the fun test equipment before turn over. Home-ported in Port Hueneme sicne 1965. While there - how much of the time might she have been the only ship homeported there? Such arrangement get a unique closer bond between the Ship and the local community. The USS Lexington was homeport from mid 1060s throught retirement in 1990 was homeported in Pensacola. Probably for last decade she was the same only ship homeported there. below - Stood OUT.- Get Underway, fully ready for all operations. Wfoj3 (talk) 21:17, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Hull code

There are several images, including the one currently in the infobox, that clearly show the hull code as being "VM-1". I've hunted around for more images of Norton Sound, and also the other three ships in her class, but didn't seem to find any answers, or images where she has "AVM-1" on her bow. It appears that when she was reclassified in 1951, the actual hull code on the bow was changed from "AV-11" to "VM-1", instead of "AVM-1". There's enough documentation to confirm it was "AVM-1" on paper, but does anyone know why the "A" was left off during the paint job for the change? Thanks - wolf 18:35, 30 May 2022 (UTC)