#564 Making Peace from Pieces

 Fun Fact #564

Making Peace from Pieces 

When most people think of Naval warfare they often imagine aircraft carriers launching planes into the sky, Destroyers with their large cannons, or even submarines with their hidden torpedoes. Yet there is one crucial piece of the puzzle which is often overlooked: Who repairs these leviathans of the sea when they are in their most desperate hour suffering from damage?

This was the concept behind the creation of The USS Hector (AR-7) which was a Vulcan-Class repair ship. Over her 52 year tenure, she assisted in multiple wars (WW2-Vietnam) at one point even saving The USS Houston, The USS Higbee, The USS Joseph Strauss, and The USS Buchanan, among countless other smaller craft. 

Her most interesting mission was when she was diverted to help triangulate Soviet Cruise Missiles. During this the fear she may come under Russian surveillance became very real and so the crew built the Famous “Hector Missle” using the repair ships onboard to reshape and forge soup and tomato cans into the body, fins and cone of a mock missile before repainting it. While this was done sort of Ad-Hoc just to help protect the ship should she come under surveillance it apparently resembled the designs to The Soviet’s most advanced Missile at the time –which was supposed to be secret. Thus Hector suddenly found herself diverting much of the local Soviet Surveillance in the Pacific until the deception was finally discovered after the Russians recovered the “Missile” after it was washed overboard during a storm. This incident as a whole greatly embarrassed the Soviets and it later came out that it caused many high level experts in the Soviet Missile program to be let go from their positions from fear that they had leaked the real soviet design before the deception was discovered. 

Yet no Story of The USS Hector would be complete without mentioning her perpetual side mission to assist people who were hardest hit by life’s woes. She assisted with refugees from Vietnam, Korea, and storm victims from all corners of the Pacific. The Closest she ever got to circumnavigating the Globe was when she was deployed to assist with storm relief to Madagascar building homes, and repairing shoreline infrastructure as she sailed around the Island. Although she did leave a group of medical personnel and carpenters within a Leper colony for over 2 weeks as the ship left for deeper water during a severe storm. The Ship then made another loop of the island assisting people after this latest storm before finally picking up her missing men. At the colony they found a damaged Gazebo but the Colony was in the best health they had been in recent memory and were even taught the basics of carpentry by the sailors so they could repair their own structures. He mercy missions no matter the People place or race played in helping the US form many of her modern Alliances in the region after the dissolution of SEATO. They also coincidently trained the very first woman to command a US Naval ship aboard The Hector (Darlene Iskra).

Then in 1989 she was sold to Pakistan for a few years before returning to the US Navy and was scrapped shortly thereafter.

As always thanks for reading and please have a wonderful day.