What Would You Take With You?

One of the questions almost always asked during one of my submarine life talks is about sleeping on the sub. Most people who have been around sub sailors have heard about hot racking and I will have to admit to doing so a few times in my career as a lower rated enlisted man. Getting […]

Too Big To Fail

I was only able to serve on five subs and two of those were 688 class boats so my viewpoint may be a bit limited. But I am under the opinion that the designers did a pretty good job making a machine whose sole purpose was to hunt and kill the enemy. The reactor and […]

Need a lift?

August 8 1974 was the day when one of the most interesting events of the Cold War came to a dramatic point. On that day, the Glomar Explorer completed a journey and a mission that had been so well cloaked in secrecy, it is doubtful that we even know today all that transpired during the […]

Disrespected

Somewhere, Mrs. Stamps (my third grade teacher) is standing with her shoulders slightly slumped and shaking her head. She has just heard one of her students use a noun as a transitory verb for the hundredth time and feels like her mission of bringing proper English to the children of Mt. Vernon Elementary School has […]

You want me to do WHAT sir?

Most of us remember Newton’s First Law of Motion: An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. A 688 class submarine operating submerged has a displacement of about 6900 tons. So it […]

What a mess!

Imagine yourself on the periscope of a submarine about to shoot a torpedo. You can feel the adrenaline coursing through your veins and there is an icy sheen of sweat on your forehead. You call out for the Quartermaster to take your mark and he rushes over to note the direction. The control room crew […]

America’s Day Begins in “Guahan”… (that’s gonna take some getting used to)

Ah, Guam, garden spot of the Pacific. “America’s Day Begins in Guam” said the license plates of this little island paradise for many years. Guam (Guahan) is an organized territory of the United States and has played a key role throughout its long history with the US. It was also a launching point for countless […]

Bagpipes and Boomers and Beer, oh my!

Holy Loch Scotland One of the saddest days of my life was the day we left Dunoon Scotland and the Holy Loch so many years ago. It was 1991, our tour was shortened by the end of the Cold War drawdown and I was headed to a tour as M Division officer on the Hunley. […]

The Anchor’s Missing Sir

Anchors Aweigh is described as the response to the order to weigh anchor when the anchor has been tripped and is no longer attached to the bottom. I am unaware of there is an official response if the anchor is no longer attached to the ship. A number of four letter expletives come to mind, […]

The Common Thread

I was about five years old when the work was started that created the Polaris Missile Submarine Program. If you think about the complexities of that time frame, there were six distinct challenges facing the Navy and their civilian counterparts. Despite the advent of nuclear power, the systems that needed to be created were all […]