[SMCARA] Happy Veterans' Day

[Dave Q]

Gene, thanks for your service.  I never saw combat either.  Submarines,
especially "boomers", are made for shallow water.  We carried 16 Polaris
missiles aimed at the bad guys.

Boomers have two crews, one on board and in our case the other stationed at
Pearl Harbor and we would swap every three months.  The off crew would get
30 days of "leave" and then 60 days of training and schools.  The crew on
board would perform maintenance and testing for 30 days tied to a tender in
Guam and then patrol for the remaining time.

On patrol we'd cruise a 3 knots at a couple of hundred feet and just make a
big loop or circles to keep the missiles in range of the designated
targets.  We never knew where we were or if it was day or night outside.
Well you could tell if it was night by going to the "con" which would be
rigged for red when it was night in case we had to surface.  We had no
contact with the outside world and only listened to radio traffic.  We even
had a guy die on patrol and no one knew about it until we got back.  Kept
him in the freezer next to the food.

If you ever want to know what it was like aboard a boomer a fellow shipmate
of mine wrote a book, *"Three Knots to Nowhere"* which captures exactly
what it was like.

I know what you mean by being embarrassed when they thanked you.  Even
though I served during at least 4 years while the war was on I didn't
suffer or have the threat of death like so many others.  I had two friends
and a cousin killed during Vietnam so Veteran's Day has special meaning for
me and most likely for the other 58,000 families who lost loved ones there
and the ones lost during these last conflicts.  To quote a great guy you
may hear on Wednesday nights....."May God bless America and our troops."

Back to radio stuff.  I'm working on my S9.

73  Dave - W3DLQ