“Cooped up in These Steel Cylinders, The Combatants Would Go to Their Graves beneath the waves, and the details of the Death Fight Never Be Known.” Submarines in 1898

1898 The Spanish Threat I grew up during the Cold War. The threat of nuclear destruction was drilled into us from the time we hit grade school until sometime in the early seventies when people just realized that there would be no place to really hide if the bombs started going off. That was particularly […]

The Daring Gambler Held All the Cards – The Plunger Legacy

There are few other submarine names that show the progression of the growth of America’s submarine propulsion power as clearly as the family of boats named Plunger I wanted to end Submarine Month (April 2020) with a classic story and a tribute to one of the most decorated submarines of the Cold War at the […]

August 21, 1905 – Plunger to Oyster Bay today

I was working on the next 41 for Freedom article which is the USS Theodore Roosevelt SSBN 600 when I stumbled on some interesting items related to the early days of submarining. I had earlier posted the story about Teddy’s Excellent Adventure on the Plunger in 1905 but had not included any of the newspaper […]

A deep diving dog? There’s something you don’t see every day.

The equation is simple. The number of surfaces must equal the number of dives in order for a submarine to be considered successful in its mission. There are very few other finite measurements that can be applied to submarines throughout our long history. But that doesn’t mean that the time beneath the surface or […]

Sub Pay

SUBMARINE PAY Teddy Roosevelt was the first American president to go aboard a submarine and participate in a dive. The USS Plunger dove beneath the surface of Long Island Sound on August 25th 1905 with the President on board. President Roosevelt not only achieved this historical first but was the man directly responsible for […]