[GreenKeys] Paper tape handling

[Bob McConnell]

Don Robert House wrote:
> There is a center unwinder and a winder that are used with the TD.   
> There are several sizes and some that convert to wind different width  
> tapes.  You can make a center unwinder with a little effort but the  
> winder is more difficult.  They are available on eBay from time to time.
> 
> Don
> 
> On 24 Apr 2006, at 4:03 PM, gil smith wrote:
> 
> Hi Eugene:
> 
> That's a darned good question.  I have always just let the tape spew  on 
> the floor (which I think is kinda cool), and then wound it back  up.  
> But I don't read tapes much.
> 
> In a "production" situation, it gets messier, so I'll let the  greenkeys 
> folks comment on this.
> 
> thanks,
> 
> gil

On board the destroyer fleet there was no room for winders, rewinder, or 
other paraphanalia. The standard procedure was to spread your off hand 
ala the Texas Longhorns, put the head end of the tape under the index 
finger, wrap it around the thumb, back across the knuckles, around the 
pinky and back across the knuckles again in a figure eight. Repeat until 
you run out of tape. When done, take the tail end and pull it through 
the loop on the thumb and hang it on a spread out paper clip hooked over 
a nearby shelf. Paper clips were grouped by priority: awaiting 
signature, Routine, Priority, Immediate and Flash.

To transmit, pull out the tail, and drop it. Pull out the head with 
enough slack to get to the TD, and lay the rest on the floor directly 
below. Once you have receipt confirmation, wrap it back up loosely and 
throw it in the appropriate burn bag, depending on classification.

It only got messy when some officer decided he didn't like his original 
version once it was typed up and decided to rearrange every paragraph. 
If they did this very often, they found the turnaround time for their 
messages suffered, since each of theirs always went to the dead end of 
the queue, the part that was LIFO, instead of FIFO.

Battle plans were a two person project. Some of them ran 30 pages, and 
were too big for most of us to do on one hand. We typed those up for the 
Commodore at least 55 times on my last WestPAC, each one covered three 
missions. There is a description of one of those missions available at 
<http://www.usscochrane.com/ddg21/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=41>. That 
battle took place less than 48 hours before President Nixon announced 
the initial cease fire. We executed that same basic battle plan five 
more times in other areas between those two events. The Turner Joy had 
only been with us about two weeks, but we had been doing this off and on 
for five months. I believe that was our third visit to Brandon Bay. It 
has been more than 33 years, and I still get chills when I think about it.

For the rest of you vets out there, I only have one thing to say.

Welcome home!

Bob McConnell
Ex-RM2, USN, NFIT