From the Submarine Force Museum NAUTILUS history page:

On the morning of January 17, 1955, at 11 am EST, NAUTILUS’ first Commanding Officer, Commander Eugene P. Wilkinson, USN, ordered all lines cast off and signaled the memorable and historic message, “Underway On Nuclear Power.” Over the next several years, NAUTILUS shattered all submerged speed and distance records.

She is now resting as at the Submarine Force Museum in Groton, CT. Was a “Class Ship,” set a lot of records and steamed over 513K miles during her service….

I can’t believe I scooped Chap and Bubblehead on this submarine force history story….

I have been posting at The Wide Awakes for a few weeks, and I cross posted an old post of mine contrasting leadership styles…Well, it has blossomed into a full blown debate, with some ad hominum attacks, but not many, considering the “sides” represented.

The post is here. If you have anything to add (but read the discussion in the comments section, for it has transmogrified (H/T: Calvin and Hobbes) to a discussion of the current strategy for the Iraq War.

For the record, I don’t think the President has carried out the war as I have. Also for the record, I’m not the President….

I do, however, think there has been an overall strategic emphasis on a “forward defense,” which is quite offensive to some. Amazingly, to those who would call us to withdraw and huddle within our borders, staying quiet, so no one might notice us, are the very same people who refuse to support sealing our borders from illegal immigration.

I find that most interesting…pull out and pull back from an attack by a determined enemy, who makes no bones about wanting to destroy us, and, in criticizing the President, from both sides of the aisle, the comment is often made about how terrorists can slip across our border….

The prevailing mood appears to be that we will grant amnesty to the estimated 12 millions illegal immigrants, and the discussion about securing the border by physical and electronic means is pretty much discouraged.

I would ask: How do we leave a war, yet refuse to secure borders? Somehow the two strategies don’t match up to me. If you aren’t going to go forward to combat a threat, then you need to build a protected area to survive in.

So, I’m rambling, but, the two issues are connected and while some would try to keep them separated in the “grand scheme of things,” they are also the ones who drag out the “the President hasn’t made us safer, because the terrorists are coming across the borders” remark when it suits the purpose to derail the war strategy discussion.

I’m working through the mental hoops on my thoughts (remember: I’m not the President) on the plan to send more troops into Iraq in order to get a handle on the conflict. Between some books I read about a 20 years ago, one that was written about 100 years ago, and another I’m waiting to receive in the mail, I think we are headed on a good track, so long as the message is not the military might is the supreme force to employ.

Received from the author. Besides getting your personalized autographed copy, the book is the foundation of a documentary for next fall!

All,

It’s my pleasure to invite you to a discussion of my book, “No Higher Honor: Saving the USS Samuel B. Roberts in the Persian Gulf” (Naval Institute Press, 2006, http://www.nohigherhonor.com) at 7 p.m. this Friday, Jan. 19, at the Borders Books in Springfield, Va (6701 Frontier Drive, Springfield, Va). The store is located near the Springfield Mall, just south of I-495.)

The book (now in its second printing) tells the story of the USS Samuel B. Roberts, a small U.S. warship dispatched to the Persian Gulf in 1988. Well-led and well-trained, its crew shepherded oil tankers through the chaos of the Iran-Iraq War — until disaster struck. On 14 April, an Iranian mine ripped open the Roberts’ engineroom, ignited fires on four decks, and plunged the ship into darkness. With seawater rising around their boots, the crew fought fire and flooding into the night. Four days later, the U.S. retaliated, sinking a half-dozen Iranian warships and boats in the biggest surface battle since World War II.

The book has received good reviews; it has also inspired a History Channel documentary that is slated to air this fall.

Hope to see you on Friday!

Brad Peniston

My book report is here.

Oh, yes, and Brad chipped in two copies for the Valour-IT Fund Raiser this past November. Just in case you wanted to support him, too.

If I’m not there, the PVR is running…

Aviation buff? Curious about what air combat maneuvering (ACM) has been like over the ages? Do you love tactics, espcially ones conducted at high speed and in three dimensions? Do you get “speed is life” or want to?

So, at 10PM each Friday night, you should be tuned to the “History Channel for “Dogfights.”

Using computer gaming simulations software, detailed graphical representations and interviews with some of the actual “players” in many historical air battles, it will give you a dose of detail to round out your comprehension of the “process” of dogfighting….

For the Naval Historians out there, the episode aired 12/22/06, titled “Death of the Japanese Navy” was a well done detailed description of the Battle Off Samar in Oct, 1944. While the show is about air combat, they used the same techniques to tell the story of the clash between Adm Kurita’s Central Force and Taffy 3 in the early hours of 10/25/1944 off of Leyte Gulf. Featured for much of the commentary was James Hornfisher, author of “Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors”. The valiant aviators, who, in many cases with no more ordnance, continued to make passes at the overwhleming force is intermingled with the surface combat between destroyer escorts, destroyers (on the US side) and the battle force lead by IJN Yamato, other battleships, cruisers and destroyers of the Japanese fleet.

So…see about the Flying Tigers, aerial combat between “The Last Gunfighters” F-8 Crusaders and MiGs over Hanoi, Spads (not A-1s!) over the trenches, or the trials of the “Cactus Air Force.”

jfk (who served in Vietnam) in the mess hall in Iraq:

From the post on Hot Talk with Scott Hennan:

A friend of mine serving in Iraq sent me this photo and note. I received it before Christmas, but was out of the office. Priceless story it tells….:

This is a true story….Check out this photo from our mess hall at the US Embassy yesterday morning. Sen. Kerry found himself all alone while he was over here. He cancelled his press conference because no one came, he worked out alone in the gym w/o any soldiers even going up to say hi or ask for an autograph (I was one of those who was in the gym at the same time), and he found himself eating breakfast with only a couple of folks who are obviously not troops.

What is amazing is Bill O’Reilly came to visit with us and the troops at the CSH the same day and the line for autographs extended through the palace and people waited for two hours to shake his hand. You decide who is more respected and loved by us servicemen and women!

Hmmm…Not only are you stupid and get stuck in Irak, you look really stupid sitting alone, jfk.

H/T: Little Green Footballs.

It’s Wednesday again! Hope everyone had a great holiday season. Post your trackbacks, maybe someone will discover you here.

“Sea Story” of the day:

I had a “paper brain” that lived in my hands, being perused for the many items to be done and their status, or safely in my right seat pocket, with my wallet, which will further convey it’s relative importance. If was a 5″x8″ Day Timer with a leather cover and, believe me, it was well used in my XO days.

One day, somehow, I became “separated” from my separate memory. I believe it was after the end of a Planning Board for Training (PB4T) (held at 1300 on Thursdays weekly) while at sea on deployment. The anxiety level rose, but it was a busy day, and, after all, it couldn’t be over 453′ from me, unless it went for a swim…

It didn’t take long before an envelope was delivered to me by a watch messenger. It certainly didn’t appear that the wandering was enclosed, but, upon opening the message, I found two Polaroid pictures of said Day Timer. Both showed my almost sole source of recollection secured to a chair with the small nylon line used for the underway replenishment shot lines, and in one picture, a black gloved hand held a 1911A1 .45 caliber pistol, pointed at the Day Timer. Enclosed was a note, with some demand, beginning with “If you want to see your Day Timer alive again…”, yet, I had the Mater-at-Arms force on my side, so I chose to disregard any show of weakness.

Short moments later, the MA1 had dusted the pictures for fingerprints and, lo and behold, the miscreants had been careless, leaving their positive identification in my hands. The guilty parties were summoned to my stateroom and confronted, at which time, the leader of the pack handed over the missing collection of all tickler items to me. Chaos was fought back and the World restored to a right order.

You know, it gets boring at sea and the practical jokes sometimes get quite entertaining…..Somewhere, in a box in the attic is a set of Polaroid pictures, secured, after being used as evidence, for historical purposes.

Posting will be a little light, as I’m sure it will be around the blogosphere and many thoughts are percolating on this end, but I prefer to do justice to some of the topics, rather than hack out a few paragraphs unchecked.

In the meantime, my work schedule allowed me the opportunity to have a late and extended breakfast with Jim Helinger, Sr, the glider pilot, and we, as usual, discussed a wide range of topics.

We didn’t “go there” intentionally, but the discussions of the Middle Eastern situation led to “you know, some people are denying the Holocaust ever happened?” he said to me. Yes, I agreed. He went on to say that at V-E Day, they were stationed in Munich. Because the glider pilots didn’t have to any missions to fly, they sent them to Dachau, 60 miles away to help with the clean up of that death camp.

He described some of what he saw, which included piles of bodies and the bottoms of the furnaces covered with skeletal remains. He stood on that real estate and witnessed that it happened. I know Jim, Sr. He tells a good story, but not a one of them is false. I know, because of my association with him over the past few years, that the Holocaust did happen.

They can have all the conferences they like, but my mind will never be swayed. Thank God he made it, and after reading “Silent Wings at War,” I further thank God that he is here to share his memories and stories, for many in his military specialty were not so lucky.

While on the sweetest shore duty known to a sea going sailor, short of being a Naval Attache in the Down Under (so I’m told, never got to make it there, but had a friend who did), I had to pen a paper on a topic for a Philosphy course. I thought: Hmmm…how can I do something that looks serious, but can’t have that much to read to get my arms around it????

A quandry, but, I went on to think: What about the Turkish and Armenian thing? Ok, I’ll do genocide as a topic, so I’ll learn something, but not have to do a lot of reading…

Foolish me…..I will say, once “engaged,” I found there was much to read and many ways we have determined it can happen, and it’s not always about killing. For instance, I found out that The Muslim Turks would take children from the Christian Aremnians and give them to Turkish families to be raised as Muslims. That, my readers, fits the definition of genocide, as determined in the United Nations definition of the crime of genocide (Resolution 260 (III)A) in 1948. Many other things, brutal and not (at first) come under the umbrella of this word we so fear, and hate, all at once. It’s not a long read, and I’d suggest you take a few minutes and gather some understanding for use in the ongoing discussions, not only about Iraq, but for the future of those in the Darfur region of Sudan.

A guest, and it may have been LCol Ralph Peters on Bill Bennett’s morning show (disclaimer: I was driving and I renouce the need to be 100% accurate on the source), but maybe it was elsewhere, talked about how the time of history we have come to call the “Cold War” had the entire World, in it’s bi-polar superpower state, keeping that conflict between the “free” and “Communist” factions at the forefront of our issues. He made this point to support his other point that the current religious fratricide we are witnessing today in Iraq (and elsewhere, such as Darfur, but the MSM reports on Iraq almost exclusively), is not something new. It is a bloody legacy of the Middle East and the history of the Sunnis and Shi’ites, begun shortly after the death of Mohammed. Now, tie the two together: Our conflict with the Soviet/Communist “sphere of influence” casued both ourselves and the Communists to maneuver pretty much everybody else as a huge political and sometime geographic, buffer between us, thus surpressing the ancient blood feud of the Muslims from our sight, and, while I’m sure some of it was going on, the tensions between the two groups have been simmering in that “pressure cooker” for the 1945-1989 time frame.

Both “spheres” put strong men in power, which aided in keeping the direct confrontations beneath the surface.

Now, flash back to fall 1987: As I dug further into the history and analysis of this horrible human capability of genocide, we saw many cases of genocide on the African continent, as the European colonists departed. The analysis: The same as the source above: The colonial governments never solved existing conflict of the indigenous populations, then did as it turns out the Cold War did for our era: The “lid” was kept on and when the pressure was released, boy was it ugly.

My $.02: The core local issues need to be dealt with in these circumstances. The issue of by lineage or by selection is now about a is almost 2000 years in the making at this time, so it will sure keep great minds thinking about what to do to end the bloodshed, our troops and thier civilians, too. In this case, how do we convince two major “branches” of Islam to park at a conference center and talk out their differences? The analysis of the Iraq Study Group certainly doesn’t focus on this on this issue, but blames our presence in the region, with a dash of the real estate know as Israel being the salt in the same perceived wound for the violence that originally erupted in the later part of the 7th Century AD.

I think Mr. Baker and the others certainly could have afforded to be much more knowledgable of the conditions we are facing, and forgetting “concensus.”

Genocide: Its history taught me so much about the human condition.

Weekly Open Trackbacks. A “safe harbor” to “suggest” to readers they should take a chance on you(r writings). Go for it.

From last week’s Sea Stories, I discussed the ship at sea always being a place of noise, and I indicated I’d tell more of that this week. Here it is.

On my second ship, one of my collateral duties was that of Gunnery Liasion Officer (GLO), which entailed being the person who managed the trageting of the ship’s guns against shore targets, via a spotter, on the ground or in the air, who would identify and fix target positions.

As part of our “shakedown” training (it was a newly commissioned ship), we had to train in this mission area, and we took a trip from San Diego harbor (homeport) to the west to the firing range off San Celmente Island and I proceeded to practice a skill I first learned in the school rooms of the Fleet Training Center.

I stood at the Dead Reckoning Tracer (DRT), which, for the purposes of this work, was converted to a plain old chart table. The operation specialists had laid out the grid reference charts for the area, and set up the radio circuits and sound powered telephone headsets. Status boards (large hanging, edge lit plexiglass sheets) were redrawn with the format for the fire missions we would be tasked with and positioned so I could easily read them from where I stood. My tools, up to three stopwatches, a sharpened No. 2 pencil, dividers and the “Commanche Board,” also were out for use.

So, “perched” several decks above, and away from the fore and aft 5″54cal MK 45 gun mounts, I would still be able to hear the gun laoding mechanisms doing their work. Two decks below the guns, the magazine crews would pick the type ammuntion and powder charges from their storage and place them in the hoists. Hydraulics and mechanical systems would rapidly raise the 76 lb projectiles and the powder cases up to the gun mount, where they were automatically loaded into a tray before the ram then shoved them into the waiting breech, to have the breech block slam into place behind them, awaiting patiently for the electrical charge that will begin the “explosives train” on it’s path to sending the sleek bullet hurtling towards it’s assigned target.

I felt the operation as much as I heard it. I felt the forward gun, Mount 51, and heard it fairly clearly, but I mostly felt Mount 52, probably 350 feet aft of me in straight distance measurement, insulating itself from me thru multiple bulkheads and 4 decks of aluminum and steel. The firing of either mount, was clearly unmistakable, as I became practiced on sending high explosives many miles away on the word of a disembodied voice on the radio.

“On Station, Ready for Call for Fire” begins the sequence, alerting the forward observer you are available to pummel the enemy who dares to enter his field of view…..

More later…

Consensus? You’ve got to be kidding me. Maybe I can give John Gruden a call and offer my services, and those of several of my friends, who think his record this season sucks, so we can have a commission to tell him how to do it “in a different direction.”

Oh, yeah, I was tall and skinny. I never played football, but I did swim, play baseball and basketball. Much like the Baker Commission, I complee people to look upon me as qualified to discuss detailed NFL lavel football.

And, like a snowball’s chances in hell, I’m sure I’ll get a call back from my buddy John…..

I have come to pretty much emlininate profanity from my discussions, but this entire set of current events has me toying with dusting off the mental bookshelf that holds some more of the more choice sayings I learned in many years as a sailor….

Pardon me, but times like these demand those people, who are so unpolished in polite company during peacetime that they are excluded, passed over and shuffled off to assignments far from where they can embarass the “chosen ones,” who will one day be admirals and generals. I had a few friends like this during my service time. Brutally effective as leaders in the simulated combat conditions we could muster, and constantly considering the options/scenarios for war at sea. They stayed near the waterfront when not on sea duty, in jobs to helpp the fleet get better, and turned their noses up at Pentagon assignments. They knew the profession, on it’s worst day, would require every bit of sea going and combat/damage control/engineering experience they could immerse themselves in, and that’s what they did, to the detriment of their careers.

One man, a mentor to me, who could tell you when you screwed up and make sure you understood the newest tactics, had played many sports, including football and baseball, and it was always with a go for broke, victory if the goal attitude. He carried that attitude into everything he did. He made O-4. He was shuttled off to the side. He retired and, having been noticed by a reservist who drilled with them, was sought after for that very spirit, and now he does in the business world what his senior officers thought was too much out of the question.

Look at the changes of command at the outset of WWII? Those who had grown up and comfortable in the extended peacetime were tossed out to the curb and the agressive, loud, we’re here to kill the enemy and break things crowd was installed. Yep, you need those guys when the light is dim and the casualties are high, caused by the lack of understanding of those who got you there in the first place. But then, after the conflict, the war fighters are, once more, pushed aside and the politicians rise again.

One man I worked for was the most brilliant tactician, in both exercise, and also in a real world multi-month operation, but his “interpersonal skills” left just about everything to be desired. I’d go to war with him in a heartbeat, but count me out if he need administrative support. It’s men like this that carry the day in the times of challenge, not those who refuse to get their hands dirty in understanding our enemy, much less history.

Take your stinking “consensus” and stuff it. Get me a hard nosed, hard driven, focused person, who will lead and make the hard decisions, knowing full well the gravity of the situation. Side Note: Dr. Gates sure isn’t striking me as one of these guys, no matter how many Aggies had has run with and talked to. Being a friend is one skill set, being a leader is another altogether. You can be both, but the leader aspects need to be exercised first.

We don’t need smooth and polished, with the right color tie, and a manicured metrosexual type running the show right now. We most certainly don’t need unelected people to demand the President take orders from them.

We need Bucks and Bills to be put in place, with orders to “retake the Falklands” type direction from the Commander-in-Chief. Along the way, the rules of armed conflict and rules of engagement will be followed, because those seemingly troglodytes are the consumate professionals. But if they need an ROE changed, they’ll be stating their case.

Better yet, men like Bill and Buck would come home victorious, with a simple request: “What next?”

Update 12/11/2006: Looks like Rick Santorum and I are of one mind…