Topside, my name is Hoot Gibson. I'm a member of the volunteer staff at Patriots Point, [and I'm] assigned to the USS Laffey. I served [in the U.S. Navy] from 1956 to 1962. I spent 37 months aboard a ship laid out exactly like the USS Laffey called the USS Rich [docked in] Norfolk, Virginia. I was a fire control technician. We acquired the targets, put the guns on the target and fired those big guns. I was lucky. I was too young for Korea, and then I got out [of the Navy] just as Vietnam got started. They tried to get me to come back. I said, no [because you started] a war now. [My time on the USS Rich was like] a pleasure cruise.

[The USS] Laffey was commissioned on February 8, 1944. [It was an] Allen M. Sumner class destroyer. When she was launched, she displaced 2200 tons [of water]. After she was outfitted and loaded with [all the equipment and supplies], she probably displaced [about] 3800 tons of water. She was 376 feet long and 41 feet wide on her beam. Fully loaded, she carried a 17- foot draft which means she [sat] 17 feet down in the water. She was powered by two steam turbine engine systems [that made her] very fast. It was [a rough ride], there was never a calm sea with a destroyer.

[You can't use or drink salt water, you have to have fresh water]. This evaporator [takes in the] seawater, evaporates it into steam, and then condenses it back into fresh water for the boilers. This would [provide us] somewhere around a 1000 gallons [of fresh water] an hour. [We operated] an aircraft carrier at high speed and used the fresh water to cook with and to drink. For showers and the laundry, [the fresh water] was shut down.

These ships weren't crew friendly as it was common place for these ships to roll back and forth, sometimes as much as 50 degrees. [It would roll back to one side of zero and then to the other side, but it was [typical] for [it to roll back and forth at 30 or 35 degrees]. It didn't take much [of a rough] sea for it to roll back and forth. Plus, it [also rocked forward and back], diving under the water. The mess cooks would take a big pan of beans for instance, and hook it into their belts, come down the ladder, put it on that steam line and never spill a drop. [There's] the barbershop. I can tell you that [you didn't tell him how to cut your hair when you went in there] because [the barber] didn't know how to cut it anyway. You just sat there and he cut it. Everybody [would come out looking the same], but it was free.