We stayed up most of the night calibrating the fire control radars. Gunners fine tuned the gun mounts for our big day to qualify for the big E award for our weapons system. We had picked up a load of ammunition at Damneck and steamed for our target area. The aircraft pulling the target sleeves was to fly from starboard to port and we were to open fire on the sleeve. The ammunition was "puffer rounds" that made black smoke puffs when they exploded. The judges counted these for a score. Everyone assumed we had missed every time. The target sleeve then came around to the port battery. They opened fire and again, no black puffs of smoke. Lt. Davis was on the horn wanting to know what was happening. We just knew he was getting a good dressing down from the skipper. The target sleeve made another pass to starboard and port with still no hits. The observer came to the FT shack with the Lt. for the second round and we showed them on the radar scope that we could see the ammunition going right straight to the sleeve and it should have exploded. They ask the plane pulling the sleeve to make a low pass over the ship. Using binoculars they observed several holes in the sleeve. Indeed we had been actually hitting it but the shells did not explode. The Skipper ordered several rounds fired point blank at the water a few thousand yards away. They should have exploded on contact with the water, but instead they skipped off the surface like a flat rock on a pond. We had a bad load of ammunition. We wanted to go back and get more ammunition to try again but had used up our scheduled time and would have to wait for another chance later. Last time I saw the Manitowoc I saw the big E displayed and knew they had finally made it. FTG2 Robert Pointer