← WETSU: a BattleshipNJ Podcast
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Welcome back to wetsu, a Battleship New Jersey podcast where we dive into leadership, legacy and the stories behind the people who keep our Navy moving forward. WETSU is proudly sponsored by the engineers Label Employer Cooperative ELEC825 whose support continues to power the mission here on the Battleship New Jersey. Today we're continuing our focus on the commands and organizations right here in our region, highlighting the work being done across the Navy that many people may not see but is absolutely essential to fleet readiness. I'm thrilled to welcome today's guest, Captain Joseph d', Arcy Commanding Officer of the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Philadelphia Division. Captain D' Arcy is a native of Long Island, New York and graduated in 2001 from the United States Naval Academy with a Bachelor of Science in Ocean Engineering. He received a Master of Science in Transportation and Naval Engineering degree from MIT and a Doctor of Philosophy in Mechanical Engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School. Captain d' Arcy served as First Lieutenant aboard USS Fitzgerald and deployed in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Following his tour on Fitzgerald, Captain d' Arcy transitioned into the engineering duty officer community. He then served on the maintenance staff and 43 as a desk officer for the Commander of Naval Surface Forces Atlantic. During that tour he was selected to serve U.S. forces in Afghanistan in Kabul as Operations Officer for Task Force Power, an electrical and safety organization for US Spaces and theater. He was later selected to serve as the DDG1000 production officer for the supervisor of shipbuilding in Bath, Maine where he oversaw the construction, outfitting, assembly and testing of both the Zumwalt Class DDG 1000 and DDG1100. And following his PhD at the Navy Postgraduate School, he served as the Production Officer for the Arleigh Burke class destroyer shipbuilding program and he assumed command of the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Philadelphia Division in March 2003 and I believe in a few short weeks will be relieved after a very successful three year tour of duty. So Captain Darcy, welcome aboard the battleship New Jersey for the first time and welcome to wetsu.
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Great, thanks. Thanks for having me here on Marshall. A real honor to be here to talk with you and be here in New Jersey.
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Thank you.
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A
First thing I always like to start
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is obviously you went to the Naval Academy in Annapolis. What made you want to join the Navy?
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I think I probably say that I was hooked from a really young age. So my believe it or not my grandfather served in World War I. My My father served in the Air Force then my first my oldest three brothers and the youngest of six kids kids my oldest three brothers went to A service academy. So at the young age of six, I'm seeing all of this in front of me. Really had to be a part of the.
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Did they all go to the same academy?
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No. First two went to Navy and then the third guy had to be different, the Air Force. So hooked from a young age. And then I don't know if you've ever seen there's a Dilbert cartoon where they talk about the. Somebody having the knack. Right. And it's a child taking things apart and putting them back together again. That's really kind of how I, I kind of got the engineering into. My father was a, was a civil engineer.
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Okay.
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And, and you know, just growing, growing up that way and just ended up, you know, being in the service and, and growing up in the service was something that was important to our family. So. And it really is continuing today with, with a few of my nephews who are serving today.
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That's awesome. It's a family affair and we've, we, the more we, the more I talk to people, the more I see those who are pre. Deserved to service are taking after those in their family. We have my deputy Julie, she had three kids go to Naval Academy. And the last couple folks we have on has very much been a family affair.
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So it's a great place to be. Great lecture.
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B
You did your junior officer tour, as I mentioned in your bio on USS Fitzgerald DDG62. Anything that sort of stands out from your, your time as a young Jo. Something that you maybe learned an early lesson on that you sort of took with you throughout your career.
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Yeah. So thinking of thinking back in that time, I really, I kind of look at this as like, it's like the leadership academy. Right. So at the Naval Academy had a lot of leadership and navigation. And you think at that time it's something that you really have to just get through. Right. You know, it's just a class that they have to have and a leadership class. You don't realize until later in your career that these things are extraordinarily important. And one of the lessons that I, that I really learned was that it's, it's all about the people. Right. You know, you think, you look at the USS New Jersey and you see what an impending, like imposing edifice, but it doesn't go anywhere. It doesn't do anything without people that are, that are, that make it, make it what it is. And one of the, one of the kind of the leadership lessons that I learned is that as a first of 10, so you're in charge of the. Essentially the youngest, the newest sailors. And one of my sailors was kind of a burner under my saddle. Right. Everything we were talking about this. This person had something to knit on it. Right. And it. And as a young officer, it really bothered me. Right. It's like, why can't we just do the thing that we said? And I thought that this person was away. Later in my career, I realized that that person was. Was probably with me more than any of the other folks, mainly because they cared enough to ask questions. Right. So it's. It's fostering that. That kind of ownership is really the key to real leadership.
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B
Yeah, absolutely. And then you transferred into the engineering duty officer community. Obviously, you sort of talked a little bit on the reason you joined the Navy, why that is, but what. What led you ultimately to that transition.
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So engineering duty. Like I said, I was kind of. I had a master or a bachelor's degree in engineering, and I thought this was kind of the next thing to do. And engineering was always really kind of a real interest of mine. And I tell everybody that I really kind of fell into the best job and best job of the Navy, being an engineering officer, where you get to design, build, buy, maintain. All of the ships and weapon systems for the Navy were really at. That. Were really crucial to how the Navy does what it does and how the Navy modernizes and how we built. So I really thought that was a great opportunity for me as a young jl and here I am many years later.
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B
I mentioned also, you served a little bit of time in Afghanistan, in Kabul. Can you tell us a little bit about that experience and what you were doing there and how you ended up there?
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Yeah. So this was a time when the army was in many FOBs around the country, and in Iraq, there were a couple of soldiers who were electrocuted in the dwellings. Right. So we were looking at fire safety and electrical safety. We needed to make sure that the facilities that we were constructing for our soldiers, sailors, and marines overseas were actually safe. So we set up an organization. I wasn't part of setting it up, but there's an organization in Afghanistan to be able to ensure that we could find those things that were wrong with those locations and then actually ultimately fix them to ensure that nobody was going to be shocked in the shower and that. That the only danger that they really. They didn't have to fear coming home. Right. So. So while I was there, I helped figure out how we get electricians to each of these remote fobs. I traveled all over the country. And it really was an experience to, to be in Afghanistan for a year. It is an unbelievably beautiful country and just being there at that time was a life defining event.
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B
Yeah, I'm sure. Switching topics for a moment over to your current job, please, you know, tell us what does the Naval Surface Warfare center do on a day to day basis right here in Philadelphia and why is it critical to fleet readiness?
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Yeah, so I like to say that the Navy can't Navy without the warfare centers at Naval Surface Warfare Center, Philadelphia. We are what I, what's called the. We're Marine engineers. We are the Marine engineers for the United States Navy. So what does that mean? Right. Anything that is not necessarily a weapon system or radar or radio that is on a ship as a machinery system is our responsibility. So we maintain the expertise for the Navy for those systems. We help modernize those systems. We have experts that actually can fly away and do troubleshooting on some of those systems. So really being able to keep the Navy's systems ready to go, anything that really kind of puts a ship to sea and keeps you there, that's what we're responsible for. Everything from the trash compactors on a ship to the largest motors and main reduction gears, those are the things that we keep the Navy going. So you look at the Navy ships and you think that the guns or the weapon systems or the radars and radios are the thing that makes it a Navy ship. It really is. But it can't get, you can't do what it needs to do unless it gets there and it has supporting systems to make it effective. So just like, you know, just like your, you know, your car can't get, get around without the tires, you got to make sure that, that, you know, we're there to make sure that the systems are ready to go when the machine.
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B
And one of the unique things I think about your command and you sort of just mentioned a little bit a moment ago, is that you're also then supporting ships throughout the life cycle, right? From design to maintenance and all, all the above. And you even just mentioned you, you're at your command at times of sending people out to ships wherever they may be in the world. And so how does that sort of continue, you know, that continual work from your, from what you guys do at the Surface Warfare center, from that design, you know, to maintenance or dry docking or even the ship underway. How does that sort of continual effect, in your opinion, how does that sort of improve readiness and make sure that our fleet is sort of Keyed in with the right people at the right time and they're sticking with it throughout the process.
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Yeah. So not only are we there at the. To keep the Navy rolling every day, when we're also there for the modernization of those systems, we actually are looking at how things, how pieces and parts of systems go obsolete. How can we replace those systems. We also are in the ground floor with generating what we call the Navy after what systems are new, how can we improve things? Like I said. So we here. The Naval Surface Warfare center has been in Philadelphia since 1971. Set up as the fuel test lab. And what was important at that time was the Navy was really going from solid fuel, from coal to liquid fuel. But we didn't necessarily, we had steam kind of figured out. But how do we figure out how do we, how do, how do we do better with liquid fuel? How do we make the boilers? Right. How do we make the systems, the supporting systems? Right. How do we do the training? So we started in really in 1910. We innovation. Right. So we were innovating at the naval machinery. We were keeping those things, building the building blocks for how we do those things. Right. And then the next, the next step on that is in, let's just say propulsion is. Who would have thought that you put a jet engine on a destroyer and that a jet engine can power destroyer and that's what's really on most of our ships today or a jet engine. So. And who was there at the beginning is the Naval Surface Warfare Centers. So it is both figuring out how we can do what hand essentially train the sailors today to, to, to make the systems more supportable today. But also looking at what needs to happen in the future to make our systems more reliable, more supportable in the future.
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Yeah. And I understand you also have land based engineering sites that essentially replicate a ship's engine room. Right. So how is important is it to test and fix problems ashore before they ever impact a forward deployed?
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Unbelievably important. Not only is it important for us to test those things before they go onto a ship, but it's also important for us to have labs that replicate things on ship. As early as yesterday we were in a lab testing, testing problems at a forward ship was seen and replicating those things, figuring out troubleshooting steps, helping sailors via distance support fix the ship that was forward. Right. So you mentioned that we have a land based test in Philadelphia. So one of our keystone sites really is the DDG51 site. And that is for all intents and purposes main Machinery room two on the destroyer. And it is, I call it a supercomputer that burns diesel. And it is. It is really. It's where we build the software, where we test the software, where we train every new crew. Every new destroyer crew comes through our lander's test site to get. To get training on the software, to get training on the plants, to understand how to run the plant and do drills and evolutions on the plant. So it's important for training, it's important for modernization, it's important for how the Navy does.
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Absolutely.
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And it doesn't stop there. Things like the advanced weapons elevator on a Ford. We can do that kind of testing at war for sand.
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B
Wow, this is a little bit apples to oranges. We were just having our staff meeting, and at this point, at the end of the staff meeting, Ryan always gives a fun fact, and he's talking about how the battleship was actually designed to withstand six torpedo hits and still be able to operate. But the fun fact of that is that was never actually tested.
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Right.
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Nor were a lot of their torpedoes that were going on at the moment too. So, yes, testing, testing, testing. Making sure that it gets it right. You just mentioned all of the. Your DDG crews are working their way through the Surface Warfare Warfare center for training. But obviously as the focus on shipbuilding and continuing to grow the fleet, we just had a new DDG commissioned over the last weekend, the Harvey Barnum, and I was on the commissioning committee for the John Basilone last year, 122. And we're hopefully continuing to churn them out at a faster pace. How does your staff, your command, are you able to sort of scale as the Navy continues to scale over the coming years and really continuing to grow the fleet?
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Yeah. So like I said, we're on the ground floor when it comes to designing and figuring out what systems need to. We need to support what systems bring more capability to the Navy as well. So we also. So not only did we form that kind of support for the Navy as the ships end up getting delivered, we. We support things also like full ship shock. So we can end up supporting the data collection, the vital data collection. Back to your point of testing, making sure that can actually, maybe we're not testing six torpedoes, but at the same point, we can test to the point of does this system perform the way that it should? Yeah. As we scale the shipbuilding work, the warfare center is definitely going to be there on the ground floor when it comes to being able to support those systems, to be able to support the board of Inspection survey for accepting those ships into the fleet and then training those sailors on the systems that we support.
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B
Yeah. And obviously your neighbors at the Navy yard continue at Hanwha, continue to make a big investment in shipbuilding. I think just last week, the White House put out the second largest shipbuilding budget in modern history. And hopefully we will continue to lead the way on that. But I also understand that your division is also leading on cybersecurity for ship systems. So my question is how has the sort of convergence of engineering and cyber changed the way that the Navy sort of thinks about ships at sea and, and ship survivability, I guess, to coin a term today.
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And so if you. I'm thinking of kind of some of the, the videos you can find online about, like, I think Ryan probably even has a video on here where you, where you go through the firing control computer here on the ship. Right. So at that point, fire control was extraordinarily nasty. Right. You had to dial in lead angles and speed and distance of the target that you're shooting at. How many people did that take at that point? And it was a mechanical computer, and it's a lot of effort. So as we're going through the modernization in the Navy, we go from those analog computers, those mechanical computers, to more digital with that. That comes with the risk of essentially, are we building things correctly? So same thing that happened in combat systems essentially also happens in machinery systems on New Jersey. There the engine rooms were, or the fire rooms were full of sailors operating valves and, and operating the engine order telegraph to be able to tell the bridge that there ain't, that the engines are answering. Right. But as we modernize the Navy, we can take those systems, those control systems, and make them more integrated. But by doing that, we essentially also it comes with the risk of building those systems quickly and then keeping them safe. So not only are those systems, we have to build them in a robust way, but we also have to kind of maintain them in a robust way, always having an eye towards the threats that are coming out. When it comes to digital systems and when it comes in, as well as how do we modernize them to be robust. So just like on this, on New Jersey, there were many different ways to be able to control steering just like that. In a digital system, we have to make sure that if something fails, it fails a safe way, make sure that if something fails, there are backup ways for us to do that. That's part of our mandate when it comes to cybersecurity, to be able to keep control of the Things that we need to control of. When we think of things like digital systems that, that show the risk to digital systems like stuxnet. Right. Things that we have to make sure that not only that our systems can do what we ask them to do, but they're always available for us to be able to.
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B
Looking towards today, where obviously the Navy is very busy in the Middle east these days, our forward deployed fleet in the conflict with Iran is deployed under real world threat conditions. How does the work, you know, just thinking about today and using this, you know, this conflict as an example, how is the work being done at the Surface Warfare center in Philly, you know, translating for to the ship's ability to continue to stay on station and on mission and execute their orders?
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We talked about, we talked about being able to do distance support. That's one of our, that's like our first. Actually I'm not going to take credit for it because there's a whole organization of people that are deployed that actually handle that handle the maintenance and the casualty control of. Not necessarily casualty control, but it's more of like if something goes wrong on a ship, they can actually be able to bring repair parts and to lend expertise. So there's. I get a huge kudos on those folks because they're essentially the first response. I really kind of call us the pros from Dover. Right. So when something can't necessarily be fixed or if they run out of the expertise, they're able to con our resources to be able to help figure out how we can get over a maintenance hump or get over a. Get a system back. So first thing for us would be distance support and we're able to use systems that are again not developed by my warfare center, but by a sister warfare center to be able to interface directly with the crews that are, that are overseas and on a real time basis think like teams, like a Microsoft Teams for needy ship. So that's one of our first ways and our second ways is to actually be able to send our people forward, which we have done on multiple occasions. To be able to send folks to far flung places to be able to their hangcherry parts, to be able to bring repair equipment, to bring their expertise, to bring chips back online. So we're out there every day even before our recent events. Out there every day. Yeah.
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B
The, your, your division, the Philadelphia division of the Surface Workforce center is just one of many divisions. Can you talk a bit, a little bit about where Philadelphia stands and sort of the hierarchy there?
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A
Yeah. So we are. So we fall under naval surface warfare centers and naval undersea warfare centers, we're kind of a of agent. They're scattered throughout the country. And the way that we. The way that each of those divisions has a certain level of certain expertise in certain roles. So ours, like I said before, is machinery systems and cybersecurity for those systems. One of our system warfare centers does things like combat systems and underway replenishment, undersea weapon systems and sonar. Right. So each of those. So there are divisions spread around the country and we split those responsibilities amongst us to be able to each essentially be the Navy's expertise. That's kind of why. That's why I say that the Navy can't really without us that the internal to the Navy knowledge, expertise and longevity is really coming from the workforce centers to be able to understand the systems that are deployed as well as what. What's new and next we have the opportunity that essentially a little bit of the distance from. From the everyday to be able to see what's new and next. What are the threats? How do we handle those things and keep. Keep the need in.
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B
What's new and next is a perfect segue to the next question I had at you've obviously spent a considerable amount of time at shipbuilding assignments in Bath, Maine. What do they say Bath build is best built, right?
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What.
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What excites you personally sort of the most about the future of naval engineering? As we continue to, you know, put to rest ships and classes of ships that are no longer necessary and there's new ones continue to come online. What do you. What do you really hope is the future of naval engineering?
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A
So there's a couple of things. Some of them are. Are what we do specifically at in Philadelphia and I'll just start there first is, is we're really kind of started with ddg1000 with how do we do electric propulsion? How do we do. Well, there are ships in the. In the past that have had electric propulsion, but we kind of are reinvigorating. How do we do that better? And then by the way, how can we send that power around the ship in a more efficient way? Oh then also if I'm using electrical power for propulsion, I can have some of that available for energy for energy weapons. So that's the. That's some of the new and next is like how. But. But it's difficult to understand or at least at the ground floor, how do we build a system, an electrical system that is robust to be able to support the loads that energy weapons might take to a ship. So that's the thing. Some of the things that we look into, some of the other things that I'm interested in is more of like process of design and understanding how do we build that, the knowledge base, the design philosophy, how do we build that in a better way so we can look at the threats that we're seeing, what equipment that adversaries might have and ways that we might be in conflict and use that information in a more calculated way to be able to, to give the ship operators and the Navy operators the equipment that they need to meet that threat. So taking that information, doing an analysis on it, and then saying this is a solution for that, and then making sure that new design is a whole lot to do. And that goes to kind of the third part that I'm kind of interested in. Probably with wss, you talked about the industrial. And that is one thing that the Navy has a significant effort right now to reinvigorate industrial base. And the Delaware Valley in general is a huge portion of that. The heavy industry that used to be in the Valley is not necessarily here anymore. But how do we make sure that those things are still available to us? But some of that also is the knowledge and training to meet the needs that we have. So one of the things that we try to do at the warfare centers is we have chips with a lot of the education around here. We take employees or we get some of our employees from Drexel and Stevens and Rowan from Penn State. Right. So that's also bringing in the education or utilizing the education that's here around us to be able to make maybe new. But it's more than that too. It's like we have to be able to grow our knowledge, our shipbuilding expertise. And I think that that's one of the things that's encouraging about new entrants like Hanwha into government shipbuilding potentially is offering those kind of opportunities for, for the young fresh face engineers. Absolutely.
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B
Pushing tact for a second. I wanted to ask you first impression of seeing the battleship up close in the dry dock?
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A
Oh yeah. So unfortunately in my career I've seen a couple of ships in. But, but it was, it was awesome to see New Jersey and dry dock. Um, it, it, it's always a thrill to, to what? Be able to walk under the ship in here. And you think all of this is held up by the. Just a couple of keel blocks. Yes.
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B
Right.
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Was, it was really impressive to see how much of the dry dock she filled up, to see all four shaft lines, to see it. It's kind of A nerd's paradise down there. Right.
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B
That's exactly how we would describe it to.
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Right, It's. And the other thing that might not necessarily be as interesting to the layperson is also seeing the fact that the graving docks at Philadelphia are still as capable of essentially. I mean, granted, age has taken its course, but it still is capable to be able to host a native that slid down the inclined ways just down the street from where she was dried off.
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B
From your perspective as an engineer and someone who's worked in shipbuilding, anything in particular that stands out to you the most that you happen to like about Iowa class battleships like the New Jersey.
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A
I probably tend to the nerdy part. All right, so. But this is not necessarily going to be a. A New Jersey thing. This is on Massachusetts. I got to go on to Massachusetts many years ago. And you could get up into one of the turrets and you're about to hit your head on this big thing that looks like a sewer pipe. And you're like, what is that? And you turn around and you look in this little tiny name plate on the thing that says Baoshan Lomb. Why does it say Bausch and Lom on it? And it is a optical rangefinder on both sides that is essentially for each of those guns. And so many sitting there on 128 IPs on this enormous range finder just to be able to operate the one gun. It's just amazing. The things on the. That we had to. The thought that we put into building ships. It was like we were talking about earlier, the Citadel and how the citadel is all of the important controls of the ship and the being able to be an overship is essentially put in the Citadel. Right. It just. It. To me, it's the thing. When I was on DG1000, when we were building DG1000, you're walking around the ship and you. And. And you think why? Why did we do it? What was that? And then you talk to an engineer about it. It's like, well, because of this, this, this. And it's. I never would have thought. All of nerves, intricate details. It is. Is it survivability? Is it our ability to maintain it in it? Our ability to maintain it. Right. And the. Can the door open so I can change the fuse on it. Right. So many things that we put into. So much thought that we put into the design and the operations of the equipment that we manage to be able to do.
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B
Yeah. And do you think they're, you know, just the battleship like this And I will class you or any, any type of class of battleship. Do you think they're really design principles and lessons learned from even back in the 40s when this ship was constructed that still carry forward to modern day naval engineering?
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A
Absolutely. So when we're training young, young naval architects, we give, give them drawings of ships like that sense, literally like a battleship, and we show the lessons that we've learned in damage control. And like you said, Ryan, saying that the ship can take six tokens. It never was tested. But how did we get that knowledge? Well, it was from engagements that we had had prior to that and things that survived through an engagement like that. And it was designed, it was used when we used engineering and we used experience and we used the knowledge that we had gained. So they say that. So have you ever heard of natops? NATOPS is kind of the operating, the emergency operating procedures for aviators. And as they're learning to fly, they're supposed to memorize every. If something happens, you need to memorize the steps.
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B
Right.
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And it is crucial that they take immediate and controlling actions to be able to right the ship, right the plane. Right. And they say that natops, the rules in natops are written. And they are, because if something happened and you need to, to take an intervention to change the thing, do something. The same thing on NAPE ships is we still learn things like when chips are in collisions and chips take damage, they don't fall. What did we learn? We learn a lot. Equipment placement. How can we dewater? How do we protect ship? How do we do certain things? And it's, it's really kind of what I like to call the Navy special sauce.
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B
Great answer. I like to do this like lightning round. And so I'm going to ask you a couple questions and I just simply want you to, you know, give me the first thing that comes up top of your head. Your favorite class of ship.
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A
Favorite class, I mean, just, I'm just. My first thought is destroyers, of course, right. DDGs. Arley Brooks, because I served on one and I built them. Just making sure that. And I'm not, I'm not leaving anybody. I think, I think I'm gonna have to stay.
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B
Well, if you could serve on any ship today, what ship would that be?
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A
Never got to sail on something this big.
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B
We had, our last conversation was with the president of our veterans association, who's a Beirut veteran, was the reactivation officer in 82. So we had a lot of conversations about him and the dry dock. Simply re engineering things on the fly to get the shit reactivated.
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A
So you talk about reactivation. I was, I was a gunner. I was a gunnering officer on Fitzgerald when we were doing surface for surface fire support. And the gentleman who came to teach us how to take, you know, how to respond to call for fire for the, for supporting the Marines on a beach or something like that was the guy who was qualified to be able to train for the reactivation for all of the Iowa's for their surface fire support. It was amazing just to kind of be able to absorb the lessons.
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B
The last hour of Battleship sailors. Do you have one word for today's Navy ready? Favorite port visit.
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A
Favorite port visit. So early in my career on Fitzgerald, we get. I got to go to Kwajalein and so Kwajalein in the South Pacific, it looks like Gilligan's Island. You would trip on one one side of the island and your. And your head would fall in the ocean on the other side. But it was a, it was an amazing place. And you know, you hear people also like kind of kind of ding. Guam. I loved Guam. Was awesome.
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B
Your favorite part about serving in the great city of Philadelphia.
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A
Oh boy, I'm going to go. This is kind of a lazy answer, but. But I really mean it is serving with the people here, Philadelphia? I cannot. I'm constantly impressed with the dedication, professionalism of all of the people at Circus Warfare Center. Sounds like a cheesy answer. It is not cheesy answer. They are the Navy's experts in the systems that are that they're responsible for. And they do it every day and twice on Sundays. You'd be duty sword the full the questions that they can answer and the sway that they carry.
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B
That's a great segue, I think, into my last question, which is this is the Wetsuit podcast and it stands for we eat this stuff up or slightly more than that. And it was the motto of our last CEO, Admiral Ron Tucker, and it was put on the ship's last battle flag. And basically what it means is doing grueling work and doing with a smile on your face and leaning into the challenge and saying, you know, we want more. It was sort of the staple of being a Battleship sailor at the time. And so I wanted to ask you, are there any sort of particular WETSU moments that come come to mind from your time in the Navy?
- [38:42]
A
Yeah, I've got two kind of nerdy ones. So one of them was the responsibility that I had as an answer. So here I am. I think it must have been 2003 on our way to the Second Gulf, the second war in the Gulf. And we were going through the Java Straits rather than through the Straits of Malacca for reasons. And here it is in middle of March. And I'm Ensign Joseph Darcy in charge of the well being of 300 sailors and the operation of USS Fitzgerald. I walk out on the bridge wing and I look down and I'm like, where's my shaft? Where's my shaft? And it is this ball right under me. And I realize that it is the solstice. I'm on the equator. Wow. It is new. So it is like the absolute smallest eyeshadow.
- [39:41]
B
Wow. That's incredible.
- [39:43]
A
It was amazing. My second is kind of is. Is more on the engineering side. So as we talked about, I was the production officer on DDG 1000 and DDG 1000, the superstructure, the deck house on the DDG 1000 is, is a carbon, carbon fiber deckhouse. It was built in Gulfport, Mississippi. Put it on a barge and bring it up from Gulfport, Mississippi to Bath, Maine.
- [40:10]
B
And.
- [40:12]
A
And then we got. I mean, we figured it out, but got to put it on. Got to put it on the ship. This enormous structure. How do we put this on a ship? So dry dock the barge, we drag the barge up onto the building ways and four cranes to pick it up, put it down, and then drive the barge out of the way the next day. This is like the coldest days in January in Maine. In Maine. Right. And the next day we pick up the deck house and we drive the ship underneath the deck house, put it down. It's because it's too long, too big and too heavy. It's easier to move the ship. So here we are staring up at the deck house that is going on to the ship being dropped on top of you. Yes, it's suspended over our heads at midnight on a January evening.
- [41:10]
B
Wow.
- [41:10]
A
Watching. And again, it's an.
- [41:14]
B
Yeah, that sounds like a great wetsuit moment. Captain Joseph Darcy, thank you very much for joining us for your leadership at the Surface Warfare center right here in Philadelphia. As we've talked about throughout this, the work that your team does every day is critical to keeping our Navy ready and capable, from engineering to propulsion to sustain the fleet behind the scenes. It's the kind of mission that always. That doesn't always get seen, but is absolutely essential. And that's why conversations like this matter, because they help connect the public to the full Navy story. And it's not just ships at sea, but it's the people in commands here at home, including right here in Philadelphia and all the folks we've highlighted here in the region and in New Jersey that make it all possible. And of course, that same story is what brings this ship to life here at the Battleship New Jersey, linking the engineering and innovation of the past to the fleet today. So to our listeners, if you're enjoying the podcast, please, like, share and subscribe. And of course, come visit us here on the Camden waterfront to experience the nation's most decorated battleship for yourself. Thanks for tuning in on this edition of WetU, and we'll see you next time.
- [42:25]
A
Thanks for having me. Marshall. Thanks for giving me an opportunity to showcase the great folks of the world.
- [42:33]
B
Thank you.