Wes Westlund is a Navy chaplain who had an unusual working environment at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island.

He tended to his flock aboard a Navy ship – a seaplane tender moored to the finger pier behind the commissary on the Seaplane Base. From 1965 to 1967 Westlund served aboard the USS Salisbury Sound (AV-13), or “Sally,” as her men called her, as she made one of her 19 deployments to the Western Pacific from 1946 through 1966.

Nuts and bolts
Sally was a Currituck-class seaplane tender, 540-feet long, 69-feet wide and drew 22 feet. She had room for 684 men with a huge hangar bay on the stern and two huge cranes that picked up seaplanes, or parts of them, easily.

She was capable of supporting two, 15-plane squadrons of Mariner type seaplanes both in material, upkeep, repair and personnel. Her shops included engine repair, hydraulic repair, carburetor repair, metal, parachute and  photogenic shop. In addition to her own officers and crew, Sally was capable of billeting over 120 squadron officers and 200 crew members.

When Westlund was aboard the USS Salisbury Sound, she tended to P5M Marlin, one of the largest seaplanes in the Navy with a length of 100 feet and a wingspan of 117 feet. The P5M Marlin only landed on the water as she did not have landing gear.

Westlund recalls when he was stationed in Oak Harbor, the community had one traffic light and the population was under 5,000 as opposed to more than 20,000 today. When Sally came back to Oak Harbor after deployment, you couldn’t go anywhere without seeing someone from the ship. Westlund added that is was nice to see that the brown shoe contingent on Ault Field had 500 or so black shoe brethren on the Seaplane Base.

Time on the water
Sally went to sea often and for long periods of time, according to Westlund.
Once the captain asked Westlund and Lt. Procetti, the electrical engineering officer, to find out how much time Sally spent at sea.

“We went through the log books and when we were done I said, ‘I think we should go over these books again’ and (Procetti) agreed, ‘cause we both thought we had made a mistake,” Westlund said. “But we went over them again and we found out that we were right. We had spent 80 percent of our time at sea and 20 percent in Oak Harbor. When we showed the results to the captain he thought we were right immediately.”

Westlund said his ship was older but clean as a whistle. The food was good and the motion at sea was comfortable, when the weather was good. But it could get hot at anchor or in port.

“There was only air conditioning in the officers’ ward room, so when we got under way we put canvas scoops on the portholes and they forced fresh air down into the ship. It made it a little more tolerable for the crew,” said Westlund.

Interesting service
Most of the time Westlund spent at anchor, Sally’s men tended to seaplanes in Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam, from which many surveillance and anti-submarine patrol flights were made.

“We pumped our millionth gallon of aviation fuel in Cam Ranh Bay, which is a lot for a seaplane tender,” Westlund said.

The USS Salisbury Sound went to many Pacific ports in her day, including Yokosuka, Japan; Buckner Bay, Okinawa; Sangley Point in Manila Bay, Philippines; DaNang, South Vietnam; and Bangkok, Thailand, among others.
Westlund liked Thailand and Japan but said one of his most interesting stops was Taiwan, where the Nationalist party leader of China, Chiang Kai-shek, had fled in 1949 to avoid the communists and newly formed People’s Republic of China.

There were posters and banners of Kai-shek’s picture stretching 30 and 40 feet high, he said.

One day the chaplain came down to the pier and took Westlund to dinner at the Inland Christian Mission. The talk turned to the aborigines on the island who had been headhunters. The lived on a mountain with treacherous, but passable roads. Westlund and several other sailors found themselves on a bus going up the mountain.

Once at top among the aborigines, Westlund heard about the headhunters’ conversion.

“The headhunters told a missionary who was trying to explain Christianity to them that they could not believe in his God,” Westlund said. “(They said) ‘I won’t believe what you (missionaries) are saying unless you go to a hut and live for a time without dying.’”

Westlund explained that everyone who had stayed in the hut and spent the night had never come out alive. The headhunters told them if they survived, they would believe them.

The missionaries accepted the offer and came out alive. All the aboriginals converted to Christianity and stopped headhunting.

Westlund was offered a headhunters’ sword, but thought it might prove difficult to explain why the chaplain was crossing the quarter deck with it.

A long career
Westlund was a protestant chaplain. He did the morning and evening prayers over the 1MC,  the intercom system on the ship, luncheon prayer in the ward room and held services in the library or the mess decks.

On October 27, 1966 the ship left Cam Ran Bay, Vietnam for the last time and pulled into Oak Harbor Nov. 21, 1967.

That cruise was 11 months long and Westlund smiles when he remembers it. He served 22 years and retired in Oak Harbor as a commander.

The Navy was a life he chose and he’s glad he chose it.

As for seaplane tenders, he sailed on one of the last.

Seaplanes and seaplane tenders came to an end with the Navy in 1967.

The USS Salisbury Sound left Oak Harbor and anchored at Pier Delta in Bremerton.

“We took her to Bremerton in January, 1967 and she ended a 21-year career,” Westlund said.

On July 8, 1968 an SP-5B Marlin of VP-40 at Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego made the last seaplane flight for the U.S. Navy.

It closed the book on seaplane patrol operations and ended more than 50 years of seaplane service.