Retirement 3.0 Let’s try this again

I think I am a bit of a hoarder. Well, that’s not quite true. I know I am a hoarder. For instance, I have an old file resistant box that has every piece of paper the Navy ever gave me. Everything from my DD-214’s to the evaluations and fitness reports that were in my service jacket […]

500,000 Visitors as of July 28

Its been over twelve years since I began the blog and I’ve posted over 1150 times. Some have been well received and others have not been as well received. But the growth has been steady over the years. so its been fun watching the number of visitors grow. A half a million. That is really […]

USS Pittsburgh and the First Pandemic

USS Pittsburgh and the First Pandemic Over a hundred years ago, the world experienced a devastating pandemic called the Spanish Flu. It traveled the world with incredible ease killing untold millions of people. The US Navy was not exempt in this tragedy. In 1918, the country was at war and heavily reliant on the Navy […]

Crush Depth is theoretical… until it isn’t

Note: I collected much of the technical information for this story from open source documentation. As always, I do not reveal information from my actual submarine experience. I love and respect my fellow submariners still on patrol and only publish these generic submarine statistics to make a point. So you were a submariner? What […]

247 Years later… How Independent are we?

July 4, 2023 – American Independence Day 247 years ago, the American colonies declared their independence from a government that had ceased to honor their obligations in regards to personal freedoms. The journey to that day was long and littered with attempts to reconcile the differences between the rulers and those they ruled. To be […]

The Pact Act

I have been going through a personal journey for the past few months. Without oversharing, I have had a number of health issues for over twenty years related to heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Thank goodness for modern medicine since I live a typically active life and still work in a job that is […]

Memorial Day 2023 – Remembering

I haven’t posted in a while. Life has been busier than I had expected in my 69th trip around the sun. It’s been a year since I went back to work as a Chief of Staff and it’s been nothing short of interesting. But time consuming. And a bit rough on my health. Memorial Day […]

No One is Laughing Now Mr. Holland

Originally posted on theleansubmariner:
April is submarine month in the United States and April 11, 1900 is traditionally celebrated as the day the submarine force was started with the purchase of the Holland Submarine. This year, I have spent a lot of time researching through the national archives for stories from 1900 or at least…

How MAD were we?

In January 1963, the world was on edge. The recent Cuban Missile Crisis had shown how close we were to Mutual Assured Destruction on a scale never before seen. The arms race of the late 1950’s and early 1960’s had pushed the east and west closer to global confrontation since the end of the Second […]

Rule number one at sea: keep the sea outside of the boat

What is bravery? Through the years, I have often been told by people that they could never ride a submarine. Claustrophobia is probably a big thing, but the fear of being cooped up in a small metal cylinder operating in a vast ocean is also a factor. I saw a lot of brave actions in […]