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Summer 1944Vignette

↑ From an engine room to the first commercial reactors

The night the engines failed

A piston head burned through at midnight and threw oil across the engine room. By 0100 the fuel pumps were going too.

Motor Machinist's Mate 1/c aboard USS LCI(L)-584, running convoys from Pozzuoli to Civitavecchia in the summer of 1944.

On one run the port aft engine burned through a piston head at midnight and threw oil across the engine room. At 0100 the fuel pumps began to fail — six or seven over the next few hours, until the ship was down to two engines.

He cannibalised the dead engine, burned every spare, then borrowed pumps off another LCI in the convoy and got all four turning again without losing convoy speed.

The crew of LCI-584 at Oran, after winning the pennant for inspections. Published with Robert's own letter in The Elsie Item, February 2006.

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