I was ordered to report halfway around the world.  On the long and  noisy flight in a four-engine propeller-driven airplane to Japan, I mused that, although I had a vague acquaintance with the shape of a Destroyer, I didn’t know its size.  I was anxious to see my Destroyer, or “Tin Can,” as I soon learned it was called.  But first I had to land at Tachikawa U.S. Air Force base and ride a bus to the Yokosuka U.S. Naval Shipyard.  The ride to the shipyard was distracting in a pleasant way, but painfully slow.  This was a very different and strange and beautiful world from the West Side of Chicago.  Finally, as the bus lumbered into the crowded naval shipyard on Tokyo Bay, I saw a sleek, dangerous-looking gray ship reposed in grandeur alongside a pier.  It almost seemed alive, like some great beast.  For a moment, I both hoped and feared that it was a Destroyer.  As the bus neared the pier, I saw other gray ships, but these were more perky than grand.  They looked too small for the ocean I had just crossed.  In short order, I learned that the first ship -- the grand ship -- was a Cruiser, and the smaller ships were “Tin Cans.”  And my experiences of the next few years reinforced my initial impression: “Tin Cans” are too small for the ocean.