Jack A. Taylor

I retired from active duty in June of 1981, on 19 and 6.  A list of:  my duty stations

Currently living in Greenville, SC a couple hundred miles from Navy Land, except for a Reserve Center.  Remarried - February 1998, to the former Joyce G. Free of Knoxville, TN.  Two children and half a dozen grandchildren, some already teenagers.  July 2000, blew my back out with two ruptured disc and haven't worked since.  Hold an AAS Degree in Electronics Engineering Technology from Blue Ridge Community College, Flat Rock, NC.

Without a doubt the most enjoyable years were NOV '62 through MAR '70 at NAAS Whiting Field, Milton, Florida.  Did two tours, essentially back -to- back.  Left there in AUG '65 for 'B' School and was returned right back in JUL '66.  Lucked out and got the exact same toolbox a year later.  We had 36 1-CA-1 "Blue Boxes" until late 1966 when the phase-out began to replace them with seven of Device 2B21, four cockpits per device for the T-28 Aircraft, controlled by one general purpose digital computer DDP-124.

Also, had two Temporary Additional Duty (TAD) Assignments while there.
1.  Middle of May of 1964 to middle of October 1964 aboard the USS DeSoto County LST-1171, Tank Landing Ship.  The ship did a Publicity Cruise of the Great Lakes to participate in celebrating the Opening of the St. Lawerence Seaway for ocean going vessels.  We had calls in numerous towns from Oswego, New York to Duluth, Minnesota in all five lakes.
2.  October 1966 to December 1966 was TAD to Data Systems Technician School, DS'A', Vallejo, California for an eight week crash course with 22 other TD's for digital computers.  They taught us using the Univac Trainer, UDT-8.

By the end of 1967 all the 1-CA-1 Blue Boxes were gone from Building 1407 at Whiting Field.  In 1968 a new building was put up and us TD's moved all seven 2B21's with only motor pool trucks and lifts and no additional funding for relocation.  We did it on the fly, one device - four cockpits at a time, in the middle of a very heavy training schedule for pilots during the Vietnam era.  Instructors were doing eight link-hops per day, with Port-n-Starboard Duty of every other day coming back in the evening and instructing two and some times three or four extra hops, along with everybody working four hours on Saturday Morning.  Even us guys in the Maintenance Shop were drafted back into giving link-hops during this Port-n-Starboard Period.

For you computer buffs, how about this bit of nostalgia.  The DDP-124 Computers at Whiting Field were 24-Bit CPU, all I.C. Chip 'Flat Packs' with about 66 Instructions at clock frequency of 2.86MHz, using a hybrid 8KB of Four Wire Coincident Current Magnetic Core Memory, which was the transistorized memory from the older DDP-224 Computer .  IBM Selectric "Ball" Typewriter, a Friden Paper Tape Reader - Punch, Six Sense Switches, and 24 Lighted Push Buttons for Input.  Yes, it was Machine Language with an Assembly Language Dual-Pass Assembler-Compiler called DAP-2 for nmemonic-symbolic coding/programming.

On leaving Whiting Field arrived in April 1970 at the Submarine Training Center Pearl Harbor, Hawaii and was assigned to Device 21C5 Deep Submergence Casualty Control Trainer which was also run by a DDP-124 Computer.  This one had 16KB of Three Wire Coincident Current (all chip) Magnetic Core Memory, boy was I in tall cotton, state of the art.  Also, added to it was a 128 Character across Mohawk Line Printer, thats right, 128 wheels and hammers, and joy - joy, it had a FORTRAN Compiler in addition to DAP-2.

On leaving Pearl Harbor in April 1973 it was the end of my technician days and wound up in 'paper-pushing' Leading Chief type jobs for eight years until retirement.

After retiring, I worked until the middle of 2000 as an Industrial Electronics Maintenance - Instrument Technician with several (some say numerous) manufacturing companies in maintenance, research - development, field service engineering.  Building machines and repairing machines.
    Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC), Robotics, Motor Control Centers to 2300VAC to 1100HP motors - AC/DC Inverter-Drives, Automatic Guided Vehicles - Remote Automated Hands Off Material Handling Systems, CNC Servo Machines, Metal Heat Treating, Ceramic Filters for Molten Aluminum - Steel, hot oil shaping colandar rolls for pressing, enough hydraulics and pneumatics to keep us all happy, manufacturing plant utilities and conveyors, and conveyors, and conveyors - miles of them thangs, sensors and actuators of about every conceivable kind.
    Virtually every thing was controlled by PLC's, early Z-80 CPU's - x86, i286, i386, to as many as 40 units all with i486/i586 CPU's looped together and communicating with company mainframe computers for inventory - shipping/receiving - computerized maintenance system - records...etc...et al.

My personal webSite is:  www.f11view.net  and also some old TD related webPages at:  Yahoo-GeoCities TRADEVMAN Pages .  More to be added here - updated soon, I hope.

I also maintain the Web Site(s):  Flat Tax and Term Limits, and
www.democrat-greenville-county-sc.com, and
Advocacy for Operation Democracy  on another of my web sites, www.polk-nc.com

Also, I'm trying to keep my computer skills polished
and am very active in the www.swishzone.com    Forums
especially the best app on the market for Screen Savers and Executables, IMO
SWiSHstudio Forum

For my friends and former shipmates, my e-mail address below is obscured to prevent harvesting by spam-bots.  It will be necessary for you to manually open your e-mail sender/client and type in my address.