as they were with each of my subsequent SOSs, only one of which I actually
worked but with control residing at what would a few years later be Herman's station,
NMO. 
Jeffrey Herman, the author of Reports from NMO, the memoir linked at the bottom of this page, was, like me, a radioman in the US Coast Guard. He was stationed at the Coast Guard radio station in Hawaii, call sign NMO, that handled shore side communications for a huge part of the Pacific Ocean. Although they've been published to a number of web sites, I discovered his remarkable reports only recently. I don't know how I missed them before.
I was one of the guys on the other end of the ether from the guys like Herman. (In those days, the Coast Guard was almost 100% male; thankfully, that has changed.) My last 2 years of Coast Guard duty, 1968 and 1969, a few years before Herman sat down to his first watch at NMO, were spent as an RM2 (Radioman 2nd Class) on a 311-foot cutter, the CGC Bering Strait (WHEC-382), home ported at Sand Island in Honolulu. In one of those small world coincidences that manifest from time to time, I learned fairly recently that the Bering Strait was built at the long-gone Lake Washington Shipyard in Houghton (now Kirkland), across the lake from Seattle, in the same town and within a couple of miles of where I lived when I learned of the ship's origin.
One of the Bering Strait's primary duties, along with the ever-present USCG responsibility for search and rescue, or SAR, was to stand watch on Ocean Station Victor, located at 34N 164E in the North Pacific between Midway Island and Japan. During the late 1960s, the Coast Guard was responsible for 6 ocean stations: in the Pacific, in addition to Victor, Ocean Station November was located between California and Hawaii and was served by cutters from Long Beach and San Francisco. (OS November played a role in The High and the Mighty, the book and subsequent “first disaster movie,” starring John Wayne.) In the Atlantic, Ocean Stations Bravo, Charlie, Delta and Echo were covered by cutters from the various East Coast USCG ports. I will happily admit that, even though we endured our share of typhoons on OS Victor – including 2 on my last cruise before returning to civilian life - Victor was like a balmy day at the beach compared to Bravo and Charlie, located in the North Atlantic, 20 degrees of latitude farther north than we were. Other ocean stations were closed down before I enlisted, and some were manned by other sea-going countries around the world. Here is an incomplete list, which opens in new window.
During my time in the Coast Guard in the 1960s, the cutters assigned to Ocean Station duty were mostly World War II-vintage 311s like the Bering Strait (Casco class), 327s (Treasury class) and 255s (Owasco class, aka Lake class), together with the then-new 378 Hamilton class cutters, which are still in service. The routine was the same for all the USCG-manned ocean stations: sail out to the station, relieve the cutter that was there before you, and spend the next 3 weeks under more or less continuous power on a 10-mile grid within the 110-mile square station, be relieved by another cutter, and sail back home. Approximately a month later, do it again. I did 13 of these during my time on the Bering Strait. Four of them were the front or back ends of a “Double Victor,” whereby, after being relieved, we would head into Yokosuka, Japan (universally mispronounced in the Coast Guard and the rest of the American military as “Ya-KOOS-ka”) for 10 days, and then back out to relieve the cutter that had relieved us, for another 3 weeks on station before getting relieved yet again and heading home to Honolulu.
The primary duties of the ocean stations were to provide navigational assistance to trans-oceanic aircraft, weather observation, and SAR and medical help, as needed – we carried a TDY US Public Health Service physician - to ships and planes crossing the ocean. Because the Vietnam War build-up was at its height, there were a LOT of ships and planes crossing the ocean, the planes with troops, the ships with supplies. And of course there also was all the normal, non-war-related, merchant ship and civilian airline traffic between Asia and North America.
It differed from cutter to cutter but on the Bering Strait, we radiomen stood watches 6 hours on and 6 hours off when we were on station. The OS Victor on-station cutter was always call sign 4YV (“4-Y-Victor” or, since we worked almost exclusively Morse code except at close range, “…._ _.__ …_”). At the precise moment that the C.O. of the relief cutter accepted responsibility from the C.O. of the cutter being relieved, the replacement cutter became 4YV and the old one reverted to its regular call sign, NBYG in the case of the Bering Strait.
Anyway, read Jeffrey Herman's first hand reports and logs of what it was like to stand a marine radio watch with the awesome
responsibility and authority of being "the Coast Guard" and the primary, often the only, link to mariners at sea over tens of thousands of square miles. Although
Herman was at a shore station and I was at sea, and his radio authority in most
(but not all) cases trumped mine, his story matches up closely with my own memories of that time. One big difference was that the guys on the shore stations had the advantage of a floor that wasn't moving, whereas those of us at sea sometimes had one hand for the key and one to hold on with, with our feet braced between the deck and the bulkhead. Herman was primary controller on his first SOS, mine turned out to be thousands
of miles away and other than enforcing radio silence on a couple of ships
in my corner of the ocean, my involvement was limited to listening, and logging,
intently. But the emotions he describes, especially the shock at hearing the
first slow and deliberate triple SOS transmission, were the same that I felt,
as they were with each of my subsequent SOSs, only one of which I actually
worked but with control residing at what would a few years later be Herman's station,
NMO.
You may find some of Herman's subject too technical for comfortable reading. Bare with it; you will be well rewarded. Almost 40 years after I last touched a key, bits of it are too technical for me and I've forgotten a lot of the procedure. My Morse code has slowed but not left: I still find myself, after all these years, mentally translating highway signs, newspaper headlines, and people's names. Like riding a bike, I guess.
Tim Spofford
Portland, Oregon
January 2006
Reports from NMO
by Jeffrey Herman
© 1994 by Jeffrey Herman All Rights Reserved.
Part 1 - Herman introduces NMO and its radio operations.
Part 2 - A description of the 500kc operating position - Herman's - and my - favorite.
Part 3 - 500kc at night
Part 4 - 500kc procedures for everything from the silent period to a SOS.
Part 5 - A LID on 500kc.
Part 6 - Herman's first SOS
Part 7 - A one hour extract from the 500kc log of NMO.
As best I can tell, Jeffrey Herman now teaches Math at Kapiolani Community College. Click HERE to try to send an email message. (I got no response to the 2 that I sent.)