“My child is a submariner… I’ll sleep when they come home”

I will never forget that day in June 1972 when my parents came to Pittsburgh International Airport to see me off on my way to Boot Camp. I was not the first in my family to leave home (big brother went to a nearby college three years earlier) but I was the first to go […]

“Brandywine, Brandywine this is Singing Bush. Gertrude Check.”

There should be no question in anyone’s mind that submarines are one of the most challenging duties any person could ever volunteer for. The men and now women who sail on these unique ships do so with the understanding that all care has been taken to provide for their safety but in the end, safety […]

The Fleet Today: 1942 Chapter XV THE “PIG BOATS”: THE SUBMARINES

While much of my work is original, there are some times when I find things that are too amazing to disturb. The year was 1942 and the book “The Fleet Today” by Kendall Banning had just been released (again). My assumption was that the book was already in publication before December 7th 1941 and was […]

Passing test depth, sir.

Passing test depth, sir. A shipmate asked the other night about handling demons. It’s a simple question that anyone who has been in a submerged submarine can understand. Years after you have left the boat, many still have dreams about what they did. The dreams can be so real sometimes. The feel of the […]

The Ride Home

The ride out is hard. You know you will not see your family for a few months and the things you will see will leave you with dreams for decades to come. But that ride home is phenomenal. When you get a day like the one pictured, the mountains on the starboard side as you […]

Too soon

You left us too soon. I know that your life had already played out and the surgeries and recoveries were getting harder to face. But I had a few more questions I wanted to ask. I’ve had twenty five years to think about them and it still frustrates me that I can’t pick up the […]

Why do older people move so slow???

Why do old people move so slow? I am fully prepared to get blasted from both the young and the old that read this post. But as I pass another milestone in less than a month, the question has bothered me a bit and I have sought to find an answer. Perhaps it has puzzled […]

A little respect… 42 years later, its still not that big of a deal

Originally posted on theleansubmariner:
Recently I was following a post on one of my submarine Facebook pages. The original guy had posted about a lack of recognition. To be fair, he had a lot of supporters and frankly I can’t give him a hard time since I have seen some of this through the years…

Grand Theft Submarine – Stealing the U-111

Originally posted on theleansubmariner:
Note: This article is a result of some research I have been doing in the past few days about an amazing submarine story related to the technological development of American submarines. The story was researched and developed using two reference books: United States Submarines, Naval Submarine League, published in 2002 and…

A New Wrinkle on H. G. Rickover – A Real Life Saver

I was doing a little research this morning about the main subject of a book I am writing and I ran across a little gem that while unrelated was certainly an eye catcher. It had to do with a young Lieutenant named Hyman G. Rickover. Okay, to be fair, he wasn’t all that old when […]