Petty Officer Collins was also known as "Ripper" Collins, a popular professional wrestler in Honolulu during Jim's tour in Cochrane ('69-'74 I believe). Jim was a Missile Radar technician from Missouri and he liked to play pinochle. He was a hulking figure who slept in the same set of racks with "Fat" Ed Comes, and Bruce "Bubbles" Benton. These are the old racks I'm refering to, the aluminum frame with the canvas bottom. The total weight of this teer had to be close to 800 pounds.

Jim recently passed away after suffering heart failure.


Edited by - David Melges on 03/13/2001 10:49:58

I talked to Jim when he was in the hospital and the last thing he said as he hung up the phone was "21 Second to None" which had been COCHRANEs slogan when he was onboard. He was cremated and his ashes interred at Arlington National Cemetery. Although Jim left COCHRANE and went to DECATUR he was still a COCHRANE sailor until the end. When I first located him about two years before he passed away he had always talked about finding a site like this where he could locate old shipmates, but alas, he was taken from us before his time. Jim served during the Vietnam era and coming from a background with a marine for a father he was very patriotic. He thought that Operations types were hippies and he should do everything to make their life misrible for them. As an example the amplydne generators for the missile radar were located in the shaft allies below OPS berthing, Jim would lubricate them in the middile of the night and make noise just in the hopes that it would keep some of the OPS types awake. I think that we probably had the best lubricated amplydnes in the fleet.