This drawing shows old station numbering with the after port fuel station (with the rectangular kingpost and original counterweight tensioning system) as fuel station 8.  By the mid '70's the stations had been renumbered to include the freight rig at the mainmast. The rigs at the foremast were rigs 1 & 2, just aft of the house were fuel rigs 3 & 4, the mainmast freight rigs were 5 & 6, the next kingpost was 7 & 8, then the final kingpost was 9 & 10.

Ram Tensioner was not used on 1 & 2 because they were slack wire rigs.  The span wire was kept slack by heaving in and paying out on the span wire winch.  It was the same on 3 & 4 until we got the outriggers and ram tensioners in '85.  Running a slack wire rig required good winch drivers.  If you didn't keep the proper tension it was easy to tightline the span wire, part the weak link on the receiving ship and dump the whole rig.  With the ram tensioner, it kept an even 30,000 pound strain on the span wire and gave you 30 feet of play with the ram's 10 foot stroke.

A good slack wire rig was actually faster for emergency breakaways because you didn't have to pay out the extra wire from the tensioner.  We had one destroyer that we used to practice with and had the drill down to 14 seconds at rig 3 and 19 seconds at rig 9 (tensioned).  Fleet average was one minute.

In MSCPAC we did not use rigs 1 & 2.  The booms were used for handling freight.  The LANT fleet Neosho's may have used rig 2 for carriers.  I seem to recall the AMERICA bitching that we didn't have a rig 2 when we worked with her in '81.  None of the PAC fleet carriers used the forward rig from the mid 70's when I came on the scene.  Rig 7 was a receive only rig.  No hoses but we did have a probe receiver set there.      Pat Moloney  3-16-2004