Down to the Sea in Boats
National Submarine Day was most recently celebrated on April 11, 2023, marking 123 years since the commissioning of Holland VI, purchased on April 11, 1900 for $150,000 from John Phillip Holland. Here in Prescott Valley, Arizona, as in many other patriotic places, there was a Tolling of the Boat ceremony at Town Hall on April 11, 2023 to honor and remember the 55 submarines and crews lost in World War II, whom many of us former submarine veterans consider to be on eternal patrol. https://www.dcourier.com/news/2021/mar/31/us-submarine-force-121st-birthday-tolling-boats-ce/
There have been notable submarine losses since World War II.
The USS Thresher (SSN 593), lead boat of her nuclear-powered class, sank on April 10, 1963, 220 miles off the Massachusetts coast while conducting sea trials after shipyard overhaul. All 129 men onboard, consisting of 112 crew members and 17 shipyard personnel, perished in the loss and remain on eternal patrol. Public records on that disaster can be found at: https://www.secnav.navy.mil/foia/readingroom/SitePages/Home.aspx
That disaster is etched in my memory because a college classmate gave me a model of Thresher at graduation in 1965 when I was commissioned as an Ensign, on my way to Submarine School in Groton, Connecticut. And, once in Submarine School in 1965, we were required to listen to underwater telephone recordings of the moments when Thresher’s hull imploded from depth pressure when voices of her crew members could be heard. Thresher’s loss cemented the practice of making a tag with the name of each shipyard worker and, before leaving on sea trials, selecting from those tags those workers who would accompany the boat’s crew on sea trials, where the objective is for the number of surfaces to equal the number of dives – an incentive for workers to be particularly careful during the overhaul.
USS Scorpion (SSN-589) was a Skipjack-class nuclear-powered submarine and the sixth vessel, and second submarine, of the US Navy to carry that name. Scorpion was lost with all hands on May 22,1968. The wreck of Scorpion was found in August, 1986 at a depth of 10,000 feet in the Atlantic Ocean, 400 miles southwest of the Azores. When she originally went missing on the way home from the Mediterranean, she could not be contacted or found; her call sign was “Brandywine,” which was answered by numerous private vessels but none from the boat itself. There have been varied and conflicting reports about the cause of her demise.
#submarines #navy #thrillers
