This USS Little Rock space has not been solved....yet!

[00:00:00]Hi friends at the Buffalo Naval Park.

[00:00:02]It's Shane Stephenson, director of museum collections and curator here.

[00:00:07]For this video, it's not actually doing anything, but I'm talking about prepping for a future video, which is pretty exciting.

[00:00:16]Uh we recently had the Military History Preservation Group on board. Uh we have a large event coming up on uh 2nd August. Uh we have a 10-day training with the sea cadets. So, you know, we're in our season, and it's busy, and I sometimes I just don't get to make as many videos as I would like to that, you know, that I can during the winter.

[00:00:39]So, this is uh some developments of a very frustrating space uh called the Atomic Strike Room here on USS Little Rock.

[00:00:50]This is born a little bit again of working with Dr. Phil Hayes. All right.

[00:00:54]Uh you know, we talked about uh the extended bridge here and flag plot, and of course, also the plots uh the pilot house uh up on the 03 level uh using resources of his and and uh his thoughts and ideas.

[00:01:15]And there's been a a couple new developments in the Atomic Strike space.

[00:01:22]Uh but still a very frustrating space.

[00:01:27]So, uh Lucas, myself, Dr. Hayes, and Brendan are kind of working through trying to build a timeline of not only what the room looked like, but what was actually done in that space.

[00:01:46]All right. Certainly, I engage with uh whenever I engage with a CLG-4 guy, I always ask, "Hey, did you ever know anyone that worked in Atomic Strike?"

[00:01:55]And especially for the COM-6 fleet guys who were attached to the flag, that was a flag space. I asked them, no one seems to have any idea. I even asked Ray Mabus, 75th Secretary of the Navy.

[00:02:10]He had no idea, either. So, there's one reference to it in Norman Friedman's book, and I'm going to read that to you.

[00:02:23]So, he writes, um The center showed as well as any particular development, the transition of the flagships from air defense control centers within task groups or task forces to an offensive fleet control center, which would help uh a fleet commander plan nuclear strike operations.

[00:02:49]So, this is during the time period of the development of the CLGs, taking the CLGs from air defense to now offensive.

[00:03:01]And he says that is the proposed war room for strategic control, the flag plot for tactical control, the atomic strike control center would serve as a war room for numbered fleet commander.

[00:03:16]And in this passage, they're really talking about the Sixth and the Seventh Fleet, uh the development of the flagships um for the numbered fleets.

[00:03:27]He says, "However, the Sixth Fleet felt that an actual strike planning required a separate space for the mechanics of strike accounting, recording of strike data, and analysis of strike progress.

[00:03:43]It did not want such mechanics integrated into the decision-making center.

[00:03:51]Similarly, similarly, although the an operational intelligence center was essential, it had to be kept sep- separate from the war room.

[00:04:03]So, if you go back into those videos of the pilot house and the flag plot with Dr. Phil Hayes, I found it after reading this passage, I found it interesting that he calls this space the war room.

[00:04:20]We here call it flag plot.

[00:04:24]Now, I'm hopeful to dive a little bit more into the blueprints that Dr. Hayes may have of CLG-5.

[00:04:32]We don't have those, we have CLG-4.

[00:04:35]Obviously, and it is listed as flag plot, but he calls it the war room. So, this space, we've talked about this space before. You've got the big map of the Mediterranean behind you.

[00:04:48]And it's right underneath the 03 pilot house.

[00:04:52]So, it's interesting that Friedman references a war room and a flag plot.

[00:04:58]We call our space flag plot, CLG-5, at least Dr. Hayes calls it war room.

[00:05:06]But then they also mention a couple other spaces, right? They mention the strike space, uh the atomic strike space.

[00:05:13]So, thanks to the good work of of um my volunteer Teresa, we have come across a blueprint from '66.

[00:05:23]All right, let's check that out. I have uh a photo of it on the wall here.

[00:05:28]Or a scan of it.

[00:05:32]And even here, they call it flag plot.

[00:05:37]Atomic strike, message area, and flag operations officer's office.

[00:05:46]So, there's some changes and this is again from '66. There are some changes.

[00:05:52]This space is not separated now.

[00:05:56]It is all one room, message area, flag plot. At least that's how it's labeled here on the door.

[00:06:04]So, there is no bulkhead here anymore.

[00:06:06]This entrance way here is, I believe, this one. You know, there's the entrance to flag plot.

[00:06:13]So, you have the door, entrance to flag plot, entrance here.

[00:06:18]So, now this turns into, it's not on the tour route, it turns into one space. Not relatively large. It might be 8 ft in length or something, maybe.

[00:06:29]It goes from rough frame 48 uh to 52, it says.

[00:06:36]All right, so 4 and maybe 12 ft.

[00:06:42]But, there seems to be on the 1966 plan that I just showed, there seems to be a break and maybe that is this here.

[00:06:50]All right, so this weld might represent the bulkhead that's dividing the space.

[00:06:55]It does continue a little bit here, here, here, and through there.

[00:07:00]And then it kind of ends because we have insulation there.

[00:07:04]But, not here.

[00:07:06]So, this may have been the break right here between these two spaces, one and two. And of course, on that blueprint it shows that there's door directly to the uh to the flag plot.

[00:07:24]So, there door.

[00:07:27]And then this door here.

[00:07:32]Okay, you'll also see that the atomic strike space is all one space.

[00:07:41]All right, and now you'll see that it is not. There is now a secure what used to be a secure teletype space.

[00:07:52]So, there'll be more coming. There's some interesting architecture here.

[00:08:00]But, on that '66 blueprint it all shows it's one space. Here it shows it's two.

[00:08:08]So, this always goes back to the Friedman question of where are all the spaces that we're talking about?

[00:08:16]Or where are all the spaces that he's talking about?

[00:08:22]For the Sixth Fleet, is there another quote war room?

[00:08:29]Again, war room on CLG 5 is this, at least from our knowledge currently.

[00:08:36]So, there's a lot of cool things going on, but this is a nut that I want to crack, and everyone else actually wants to crack it, too, because we can't seem to find any information.

[00:08:50]If they they probably trained in there, but of course we never we never launched a nuclear warhead.

[00:08:58]So, maybe the space was never officially used other than training.

[00:09:05]Why did they build secure teletype space after 1966? Because it's not on the '66 plan.

[00:09:17]Anyway, you see where we're going with this.

[00:09:19]I can't predict when this will be done cuz we still have a lot of activities during our busy summer season, so but trust me that we're working and slowly plotting through this to see if we have an official answer uh, the next couple of months.

[00:09:39]Thanks so much for your support. Hope you are, uh, all doing well. Please give a thumbs up, leave questions, comments, and we will talk to you again soon.