The most interesting experience I ever – I had while I was in the Navy happened in this last year that I was on this USS Taylor. We left Yokosuka, Japan and we were going around the northern tip of Japan, down the Sea of Japan and right after we made the turn to go south on the Sea of Japan, we were only maybe like 200 miles from Vladivostok, Russia, and there was a aircraft carrier and eight destroyers operating together and one day on the horizon from – this looked like an old junker of a ship. It wasn’t a military ship, but it had probably 20 big antennas on it and what they were doing was they were spying on us and trying with their antennas here, trying to measure our radar frequencies, our radio frequencies and they followed us and harassed us, trying to get inside the circle of destroyers for a couple days. And after we chased them off, then a Russian destroyer appeared and was playing the same kind of games, trying to break into the inner circle of destroyers.

Well, while they were trying to do that, this Russian destroyer, all I remember it had a number 022 on it, collided with the USS Walker and so that Russian destroyer limped away and we continued on and the Walker sustained some structural damage, but nothing to stop it from continuing. And the next day a Russian guided missile destroyer, 025, came on the scene and they tried the same maneuvers to get inside our circle and the USS Walker again had a collision with this Russian destroyer 025. The Walker was in destroyer division 252, the Taylor was also in this division and we had the commodore of destroyer division 252 riding in our ship. So this Russian destroyer, this 025, sent a flashing light, international code flashing light to our ship and wanted us to board their ship to check the damage that was done. So our commodore sent a message to the admiral who was riding in the aircraft carrier and relayed the message that they wanted us to board to check out their damage.

Well, I was lead radioman, so I was getting all of our portable radio equipment ready and we had an officer on board ship that spoke Russian, so we were getting this little boarding party ready to go aboard this Russian ship to see – check their damage out. Well, we had to wait for the okay from the admiral, and so we sent the message telling the admiral we see this flashing light request that we board their ship and the response from the admiral was since when can you copy international flashing light? So we never did go aboard. And also during that period of time there was Russian like U2 Queens, I think they might have been called Bears, and they would swoop down on the carrier to try to keep them from putting their planes in the air, and the anti-submarine carriers all they carry is fixed wing and helicopters, they don’t have jets fighters or nothing like that. So these planes, Russian planes would be swooping around the area and we sent off to 13th Air Force in Japan and they sent out some U.S. fighter planes. The U.S. fighter planes would chase these Russian spy planes away. There was never any shots fired or anything like that. They’d like fly underneath them and then fly up in the air and just like either going to move or we’re going to have a collision, that’s what it looked like.