Shared Sacrifices

On the eve of Thanksgiving, please take a moment to think of all the men and women who will not be able to sit around a table with their families this year. Some are sitting in ready rooms on aircraft carriers waiting for an order to launch in support of ongoing operations in far lands. […]

I Used to Worry

“Man Battle Stations Missile”… dong dong dong dong dong dong You had only been asleep for about an hour, a deep sleep where the work that kept you awake for eighteen hours finally caught up with you. Maybe it was the leaking packing on the trim pump. Maybe it was a circuit board that eluded […]

Navy Proud: It’s in the blood

On the sixth of April 1917, the United States Congress declared war on Germany. The declaration came after the German government increased its belligerent actions against the United States. President Wilson who had campaigned on the strength that he had kept the US out of war from 1914 until that very moment had relented after […]

Stuck in the hatch

If I was going to design a submarine based on my experiences, I would design one with an extra hatch between each compartment. Logically, a real bubble head might question the wisdom of such a hatch since it might impede our ability to maintain watertight integrity under normal circumstances. If you have ever seen a […]

A Submariner Week

I started back to work a few weeks ago and have been pretty busy The company is great, the people are good to work with and all I need to do now is figure out how to get my girl and our boy Angus back under one roof to make life completely whole. I made […]

The Storyteller’s Burden

I don’t know when I first learned how to tell stories As a young boy, I listened to the stories of many people who were older than me. Some of them were meant to inform, some were meant to teach lessons, and of course in the early days, the hope was that if I listened […]

600 Ships – The Path to Victory started on the 711

After the upheavals in the Navy caused by the end of the Vietnam conflict, you can imagine how discouraged many people who wore the uniform were by the time the Carter years were at the three and a half year point. Blend in the miserable economy, high unemployment, interest rates never before seen and you […]

PQ 17 July 4th 1942… 2132… “Scatter”

The summer of 1942 was not just a horrible time for merchant shipping long the east coast of the United States, it was also one of significant losses in the Atlantic U-boats were coming out in larger and larger numbers and even the convoy systems were being tested to the limits with the existing escorts. […]

Uncharted waters

Its hard for me to imagine a submarine setting out on a journey without a chart. The modern Trident boats today cost between 2-4 billion dollars depending on which group is trying to defend or decry their existence. That’s a lot of money to risk on an adventure where charts are not accurate or available. […]

The Summer of ‘42

Many of the World War 2 stories being profiled right now are being followed because of the 70th anniversary of those events. The realization that the loss of so many of the participants due to age has finally settled in for many of us. My Dad has been gone for nearly twenty years but since […]