This is the story of my life so far: 68 years and counting.
Prequel: A Brief History of my Family in France
The story starts here
Previous episode: Part 70
CGO on the Corvette Jean de Vienne
In November 1982, I was posted on the Corvette Jean de Vienne that was going to start her trials at sea in Brest.
Note: I have been saying that the "Georges Leygues" and the "Jean de Vienne" were Corvettes, while they are called now called Frigates. This is because they were initially called Corvettes, then later Frigates.
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On the Jean de Vienne, I was the "Chef du Groupement Opérations" (Operations Group Leader), in short the CGO.
As the ship was not yet in service, the "operations" were initially the trials at sea.
My job was mostly to organize the trials with the shipyard.
As I had already been on two other new ships (Frigate Tourville and Corvette Georges Leygues) during their trials at sea, I had some ideas on the things we should do or not do during these trials.
Each trial usually involved several participants or groups of participants, in different places on the ship and/or onshore. So, it always involved communication to coordinate the trial.
We would take each trial and split it into several individual events. Each of these events would be given a number, and the list of the events was distributed to each group of participants.
To perform the trial, from the bridge of the ship, we would indicate the event number before each event.
We would try to perform the different events in the same order as they had been distributed.
Sometimes, we would skip some of the events, and sometimes too we would add additional events during the trial itself.
But, when adding an event during the trial, we would give it a number that was not in the original list of events. In no case, we would change the characteristics of an event in the list during the trial.
I had seen this done on the Georges Leygues and it always made the trials very chaotic.
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Because this was the fourth Corvette of the series, the trials at sea were not as long as the one for the Georges Leygues, the first of its class.
The computer system of the Jean de Vienne was the same as the one of the Georges Leygues, but we discovered some problem with the computer officer.
Continue to Part 72
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Summary
Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7
Part 8 - Part 9 - Part 10 Part 11 - Part 12 - Part 13 - Part 14
Part 15 - Part 16 - Part 17 - Part 18 - Part 19 - Part 20 - Part 21
Part 22 - Part 23 - Part 24 - Part 25 - Part 26 - Part 27 - Part 28
Part 29 - Part 30 - Part 31 - Part 32 - Part 33 - Part 34 - Part 35
Part 36 - Part 37 - Part 38 - Part 39 - Part 40 - Part 41 - Part 42
Part 43 - Part 44 - Part 45 - Part 46 - Part 47 - Part 48 - Part 49
Part 50 - Part 51 - Part 52 - Part 53 - Part 54 - Part 55 - Part 56
Part 57 - Part 58 - Part 59 - Part 60 - Part 61 - Part 62 - Part 63
Part 64 - Part 65 - Part 66 - Part 67 - Part 68 - Part 69 - Part 70