Got any good ship nicknames?

I retired as an RM1 after 21 years and only remember a couple of nicknames for ya:   

USS Lawrence DDG-4    "LarryBoat" or sometimes "Leaky Larry"

USS Fairfax County LST-1193 "Firefax County" after a pretty bad engineroom fire off of Palma, Spain in 1978 or 79

USS John F. Kennedy CV-67  "Crash Kennedy" referring to the collision with USS Belknap

USS Affray MSO-511  "USS Afraid"

Sorry thats all I can remember---senior moments etc.  Rick Martin

DBFSS385 wrote:

Some boats like the San Francisco are nicknamed their hull numbers like 7-11 etc. I'm willing to wager that the Submarine Service had many more nicknames for their boats than the skimmers did.

<EDIT> just after posting this my roomie who was on the USS Blue Ridge LCC-19 in the 80s says his ship was nicknamed "The Love Boat" because it was never out of port for more than 2 weeks or so and was considered a "party boat" due to its stays in liberty ports

The Oklahoma City got a pretty good nickname when it was home ported in Yokosuka , Japan. We were in port with just a couple of other ships and so when we went to town we could barter with the girls that worked the bars and keep the prices cheap. However this changed when a carrier came in that had been out to sea for several months. Them guys had been saving up their pay all that time and spent money like there was no tommorow . When they got to town the prices doubled and trippled .The girls that worked the bars knew that us guys off the Oklahoma City couldnt spend what the carrier sailors would for female companionship and so when they looked at our ships name patch the girls would shake their heads and say in broken english "no no you from  "O Cheapy City Maru " and walk off looking for a sailor from the carrier . Needless to say we had some unprintable nicknames for them carrier guys.

wingnut163 wrote:

And now the nuke sub sailors are called bobbleheads. the subs be for the nukes were fleet boats.

Actually Submariners are called "Bubbleheads".  or Sewer Pipe Sailors

The fleetboats were mostly called Smokeboats, Guppys or Pigboats depending on the name caller and the boat  they were refering to LOL. They were titles of love not slander....

the USS Midway CVA 41= 47 years in serveice, built on a BB hull over 200 crew died on her wile in service. the crew nick named her, The USS Never dock.

she has some history, from a stright deck to a angle deck then to an up grade that put her at the level of a nimitz class carrier.

And now the nuke sub sailors are called bobbleheads.

the subs be for the nukes were fleet boats.

The USS Bushnell AS15 nick= the burning bush. a fire in the aft enginroom in 65.

all so captains had nick names too. one of the Bush's caps was steaming steve. tryed to get under way to go to miami and the wind keped him at dock side, he then got two tugs pined between us and the quay wall. ripped 8 scuppers off the starbord side.

During WW2, USS Intrepid was known as the "Dry I" because she spent so much time in drydock repairing damage.

Cheers,

John Snyder

I also remembered a few more.

The Bon Homme Richard was called the " Bonnie Dick" The John F Kennedy was the "JFK", Intrepid was the "Evil Eye"

The Jimmy Carter is also called the "USS Peanut" as was the George Washington Carver .

The Halibut was called  " The Hell of it"

The Parche was also called  The "Too Shay" or "French Fry"or as we called  her and Halibut  the"Spook Boats" which I'm sure the Carter is also called.

A post on another site reminded me of the whole November Class of Soviet Boats being called  "Glow Boats". ( that class had several reactor problems and they lost a few as well as every boat in the class had a major accident ( or more) with their reactors) I'll wager there isn't a single November Class crewman alive today without a serious radiation poisoning or  related health problem if you can still find one alive at all. Very Dangerous Boats, more so to their own sailors than to other vessels for sure.

The Skipjacks were called "The S Boats"

In 1960s and 70s Submarine jargon the SS Boats were all called Smoke Boats, or Pig Boats by Nuke sailors.  SSNs were also called Glow Boats or Nukes by SS Sailors  , and SSBNs were all called "Boomers" or  Barges or Turtles. All surface craft were called "Targets" or "Skimmers" and all Soviet Boats were called "Ivans". The RN Boats were called "Pommy Boats", RAN Boats were called "Ozzie Boats" & RCNs were "Canook"  We also had nicknames for the Italian, China, French and German Boats but they were not "Politically Correct"and I don't wish to offend anyone..All Submarines were called "Sewer Pipes" by "Skimmers" and their crews were called Sewer pipe sailors a title we were proud of and worked really hard living up to it LOL....

More will come to me I'm sure, us old guys have a problem with CRS from time to time.

Sorry, but Swayback Maru was USS Salt Lake City, not the Indianapolis. There are plenty of WW2-era references that substantiate this.

HMS Penelope: HMS Pepperpot

USS Coral Sea: San Francisco's Own

USS Bainbridge: Billy B

Cheers,

John Snyder (USS Bainbridge, 1966-70)

The USS City of Corpus Christi was also known as "The Body of Christ". They added the "City of" to its formal name because the boys in DC thought it unseemly to have a nuclear hunter-killer submarine named after the Saviour of man.

The USS Canopus was called many names especially after females were added to the crew. I will leave the possible name modifications up to your imaginations.

I'll add a couple:

USS Sand Lance (SSN-660) was called the "Fun Lance",  USS City of Corpus Christi (SSN-705)was known the the "City of Cocoa Krispies", USS Batfish (SSN 681) was called "The Bat Boat",  and USS Simon Lake (AS-33) was the "Slimy Snake". I'll add more as I remember them.

Four ships I served on had some interesting nick-names.

USS Yellowstone:   "Yellow Stain"  & "Jelly Roll"

USS Carl Vinson:   Officially nick-named the "Golden Eagle" which we translated to "Brass Buzzard" also known as the "Chucky V".

USS Nassua:  "Nausea"

USS Saipan:  "Sigh Pain"

My second ship, the USS Normandy, CG-60, commissioned with a less than popular CO that never allowed liberty.  So the Normandy was know affectionaly by the crew as "Cell Block 60- The Cruiser from Hell".

-Devin

Ennyone ever heard of the Batty Ann? The CVL, not the LHD/LHA which ever the new one is. My old man is a plankowner of the USS Bataan....

Oh well,,

LL

SM2 its nice to hear from a fellow ex -2nd class that served in the 60's. I was a RD2 on CLG-5 and we did a wespac tour 64 thru 66. Home port was Yokosuka , Japan.

Carl

subfixer wrote:

I scraped up a few more off the bottom of my boondockers and would like to share them, too.   USS:   Ronald Reagan- The Gipper,  Teddy Roosevelt- The Big Stick,  Antietam- Auntie M,  Nimitz- Numbnutz,  Oklahoma City- Broklahoma City,  Harry S Truman- Hairy *ss Truman, Arleigh Burke- Always Broke

I was on the Oklahoma City ( CLG 5 ) back in 64,65 and 66. We used to call her "the Okkie Shi**y".We went out for speed trials and  on the fantail the vibration  was so bad that my vision got blurry . The vibration caused a leak to develope around the rudder shaft and we had to head back to port for repairs. As i remember she got up to 28 knots.