Interviewer: What were the sort of general duties, the general things you had to do to navigate the ship?Finnegan: Well essentially the navigation was in three main sectors. You took your morning sights within a half hour after dawnYou would go up on the bridge and take your morning star sights and plot your morning position. Then at noon when the sun would be directly overhead from a longitudinal point of view you would take your latitude position at noon. That would always give you your latitude, it wouldn't tell you where longitudinally wise you were but it would always tell you your latitude. And then in the evening within a half an hour after sunset just before dark you would take your evening star sights. Now in those days we didn't have Loran or anything else so it was the morning and evening fixes were the most important things to get. But it was when you missed one, whether by clouds or otherwise, you missed a morning sight or an evening sight It meant that you were running on a much longer length of time on dead reckoning and without any other navigational aids out there it was always a problem. You were never quite sure where you were. The charts were never that good especially when you were operating close to shore. And by close I mean relatively close anywhere within 10-20 miles. Interviwer: Did you have any trouble navigating on your tour of duty on USS Cassin Young?Well closest problem we had as far as potential problems concerned was when we made that sweep into the South China Sea. And at that time we were stationed out in what I recall now as something called the Tomcat duty. We were sent out, far out, from the fleet. To act as a central gathering point for the aircraft. In those times you were far out from the fleet you couldn't exchange information by radio or otherwise. It was radio silence and you were operating completely on your own. And that period of time in the South China Sea when we were coming up and that was a little bit scary. It was completely overcast for days and days at a time and we went for several days without being able to get a start sight. So it was completely dead reckoning. And I remember Captain A used to come down to the chart room often And ask me, "Honestly do you know where we are?" And would tell him, "honestly no I don't, we are in the South China Sea somewhere."

Album: Oral Histories - The Pilothouse & Bridge - USS CASSIN YOUNG