AROUND THE WORLD IN 1.8 SECONDS (REPEAT?)

I dont think I have posted this on IRV2 yet. If i have just forgive an old man for a short memory....
AROUND THE WORLD IN 1.8 SECONDS.......
I was aboard the Uss Northampton from 1959 to 1961. I was in the communications gang and at sea I mostly served on the afternoon and mid watch. Sometimes on the ''mid'' especially on the weekends it would get really slow. Nothing much happening. We would do ''field day'' and mostly goof off. One mid watch I was working the Multiplex and a RATT. (rapid automatic teletype) circuit. we were in the north Atlantic heading for England. On the RAtt circuit I asked the guy in Londonderry if he could patch me thru to Port LAYOTEE in Moroco so I could chat with a friend that had been transfered there earlier. he said yes and he plugged me into Port Layotee and I chatted with this friend for about 10 minutes. This was all done by teletype key board just like a typewriter .... The watch supervisor was a second class named Schmitt. ''Smittie'' was a good guy ...... When he seen what I was doing he suggested that because it was kinda slow ......... why didnt we see how far we could ''push a signal''.............
I will not pretend to remember all the relays we went thru and all the places that ''pushed us thru'' because everyone seemed to get on board to just see what we could do with a radio signal from a ship in the north Atlantic. The long and the short of the story is that on a mid watch on a Saturday night ''Smittie and me'' pushed a two meg. signal around the world ......... YEP..... AROUND THE WORLD IN 1.8 SECONDS.... Everyone on the ''relay'' was in on the happening and it was amazing that it worked in the first place. We found out later that this was the first time that it had ever happened from a ship at sea. We would put in a special test tape in a ''tape distributor'' .. and in one point eight seconds the exact test tape would come back to us from cheltenham md. on the east coast of the USA. The circuit held for maybe twenty minutes and then it started falling apart......... Me and Smittie were all proud of ourselves and kinda forgot the matter till the Chief of the Watch called us into his office the next morning about ten oclock. He wanted to know who the ''fudge'' we thought we were using NAVY EQUIPMENT for personal reasons and what the ''fudging heck'' we meant by sending a signal around the ''fudging'' world and not telling him about it. He also implied that we could be brought up on charges for this ''fudging stunt''...... He said we had two choices. One. We could claim exclusive credit for sending a radio signal around the world in one point eight seconds and be brought up on charges for same.......... Two. The entire communications gang would be credited with the outstanding feat of this great accomplishment with his name as Chief of the Watch in charge of the entire project. Guess which one we picked ........... The entire comm gang got the credit and the Chief of the Watch got his name assigned to the project and me and Smittie got a letter of commendation and recognition in our ''jacket'' as being part of this accomplishment just like everyone else in the communications gang.
Some time later after we came back to Norfolk we took a bunch of ''dignitaries'' out to the vacapes op area and they tried to repeat the event. they could never get past morocco.............. Me and Smittie would just smile knowing we did it and we were the first.......
So it was aboard the Norton on the way to England.......

Seajay the sailor man ..