Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Dakkon, Dude!!!

Don’t assume anything Fred, we practice for it all the time.

I didn't "ride" nukes.. I operated a Nuclear power plant.... I was on a fast attack submarine, the USS GREENVILLE 772... One of the few U.S. submarine's to sink a ship since world war II... google it.....

Ever see "The Simpsons"? well, that cartoon was based off of what i did in the Navy, no joke... Sit at a pannel for 6 hours at a time and hope like hell none of the meters moved.... well, not "that" stressful, but if certain meters did move, bad things could happen fast, chernobyl, 3 mile island.....

I can't really say much about "where" we went... The one thing i can say is that i have been to the north pole... We were going to surface, but a stupid door that protects some of the sensors on the bridge messed up, and we couldn't punch through without causing like 10,000,000$ worth of damage... so, that part was a no go....

I was a "throttle man" for a while basically i controlled the throttles, hence the name ... being in control of 35,000 hp is kind of cool.... that number is from wikipedia, so take it for what you will... The torque number is classified... let's just say you could tell you were in charge of an A$$ Load of power, and leave it at that.. That was probably most fun part of the job...

bzzzt crackle... "This is the captain speaking. Throttle dude. Step on it!"
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Yeeeeeeehaaaaaw!

Sounds like a mostly boring job sprinkled with some big exitement.

Das Boot is supposed to be a very realistic depiction of what it was like to be on a WW2 u-boat. Not my idea of fun.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUcxtttoKiI

There are 4 parts...

Cool... until now I don't think I even knew anyone who had *heard* of the Genie...


My understanding is that it compensated for the relatively new and unreliable missile guidance systems of the time.

"Dude, you missed him by half a mile... he almost got away !"


Did this get discussed during training, or just the "you'll be safer if you're far far away when it goes off" line ?

EDIT... just noticed the CF-101 page included the Genie under "armaments"... we didn't use Genies in Canada, did we ? Or does that just mean it *could* carry Genies if desired ?

Wow, I bet they sounded really great!

Ref the Genies in Canada - when asked, the standard reply was 'We are unable to confirm nor deny...'

We never actually fired any except on a weapons range. These were time-expired rockets with no warheads.

I may have mislabeled them previously - these were unguided rockets, not missiles. We carried 2 heat seeking missiles as well that were fired only as a pair because they were so unreliable in actually hitting a target. So, in all we had 3 separate shots.

A lot of this may seem ridiculous now, but this was longstanding deadly & serious business up until the fall of the USSR. There was a lot of paranoia on both sides back then. You had to be there I guess...

Anyway, it was great that young guys like me had the opportunity to strap on to your a$$ something like the mighty Voodoo to fend off the Hun that thankfully never came.

TAM

That's pretty cool. A buddy of mine did the exact same thing on another attack sub, the name escapes me. He saw some action in the first gulf war that he couldn't tell me about.

Just to clarify - no CF-101 ever even turned over an engine with a rocket on board unless it was an unarmed time expired unit. It was strictly prohibited & rigidly enforced (with deadly force if required) so there was never any danger of an unforeseen circumstance.

In training exercises on the ground we never knew whether or not there was anything on board, at our airfield, or even within our borders. No one ever knew for sure & they certainly weren't about to tell us. It might have been a big ruse for all I know. It was best to keep it that way I guess, but we had to play the game with all seriousness in case that real conflict did arise.

Anyway, the madness of the Cold War seemed to work as we're all still here...

TAM

Extremely interesting stuff. Thanks for sharing and keep it coming.