I read Blind Man’s Bluff probably 10 years ago and pulled it off the shelf around 2 am Sunday with a bit of insomnia. What an amazing group of men. I’m not sure I could get myself to volunteer for sub duty.
Can anyone recommend any other good historical books on the silent service, Cold War stories or the like? Some of the missions in the 60’s and 70’s were the most balls out chapters, just amazing.
Anything you sub guys can divulge to a geek who admires the craft of sub technology? The workings of the sub they describe just blew my mind, perhaps goes to the techie nature of triathletes.
Yep Blind Mans Bluff is a great book - amazing that that stuff was going on and nobody knew about it. If Obama read it he’d probably be apologizing for us invading Soviet waters.
I don’t know that I have any other non-fiction submarine type books. Several fiction, from “Hunt for Red October” to “Run Silent, Run Deep”.
I did 5 patrols on the USS Georgia from 95 - 97 when she was still a ballistic missile boat. She has since been refit to be a conventional missile boat. I value my time on the boat now that I have been out for almost 13 years. I have a perspective on teamwork that most could never imagine that I have been able to apply in my professional career beyond the Navy.
I have not read Blind Man’s Bluff but am intrigued and will have to check it out. A few years ago I picked up “Scorpion Down” by Ed Offley at the airport in Vegas to get me through the long flight home. I thought I knew about the Scorpion, as much as most submariners do anyway. What I read was pretty intense and made me rethink a lot of what I had been told on the history of the Scorpion, what I know of submarines firsthand, and what I know of the state of the intelligence community at that time. Pretty good stuff, and if nothing else, very interesting reading.
Did it not show up in Chinese characters? It might not have depending on your browser settings.
Your phrase asking people to “divulge” information about subs sounded like what they warned me about in counter-intelligence training, so I replied in Chinese.
Obviously I don’t want you to compromise anything with respect to your job or sub duty, but if there is anything beyond what I get to see in The Hunt for Red October that would be super neat to hear!
Here is a link to the book…I bought it at Newark and was done somewhere over Utah! Riveting and I was buried deep into it at the terminal, boarding and all day. I believe you will enjoy it…
My job now is IT sales related, no clearance for me. Had a TS when I was in, never want to go through that process again. Sadly, there is not much more that can be learned about subs from either Crimson Tide (Trident missile submarine movie) and The Hunt for Red October (fast attack submarine movie). Crimson Tide is fairly accurate except dogs are not going to accompany the CO on a patrol, if an officer had told me to drop and do pushups I would have laughed and lit a cigarette, and I don’t think the CO and XO would debate on launch commands. If a boat gets one, the birds will fly.
If you are interested in the interworkings of a submarine Jane’s Fighting Ships has a great description of the boats and how they operate. Sometimes, a little too good as I thought that facts that were supposed to be classified were listed clearly in Jane’s Fighting Ships. As for the day to day, operationally we just drilled a lot. And cleaned. A LOT. After every watch, and for 4 hours on the weekends.
I can tell you that submariners (enlisted anyway) do not live 24 hour days. The boat operates on a 24 hour schedule, but enlisted watches are 6 hours long. I was almost always in 3 section duty meaning that I would be on watch for 6 hours and then off for 12. Doesn’t sound like a big deal except that a couple of times a week I would be up for close to 30+ hours with just a few hours sleep between drills. An example: Sunday midwatch from 0000 - 0600; Monday 0600 - 1200 would be divisional/department training; 1200 - 1800 afternoon drills; 1800 - 0000 watch. Depending on what was happening on Sunday afternoon (repairs, maintenance, etc) by Tuesday midnight (0000) I may not have slept for well over 24 hours. This would happen a couple of times per week.
Sucks when they shut that hatch and dive dive dive, and dont open it for many many days. One reason why I hate treadmills…I always said they should put tanning beds and hand out prozac while underway!
And when you get home, dont even think about bringing your clothes into the house, the woman will go nuts!
Cremer commanded a U-Boat during the war, then emigrated to the U.S. and worked for Raytheon. Among other things, I found it fascinating to read his take on the morals of what he was doing. For example, he spent some time successfully sinking ships off the coast of Florida. This was made much easier by the fact that there was no blackout imposed on the coastal cities, so the ships could be found and sunk without much difficulty. Interesting that while Cremer was doing this, he was raging about the fact that the U.S. government had caved to the commercial concerns, and was leaving the merchant seamen so exposed.
I read that book a few years ago. I love that military history stuff thats better than anything a novel writter could even make up.
I knew my wife’s uncle was on subs during his navy career and that he was a CPO and worked on nukes. The next time he was in town I said "hey John, have you read that book Blind Man’s Bluff? He said “yep, I read it. I used to run the reactor on that boat” as he continued to flip burgers. Holy Crap, that’s pretty cool! He said he wasn’t on the boat for any of the tours into the Black Sea but was on when they were trying to recover the bomb and plane that went down in the Mediterranean while playing tag with a Soviet sub. He said the book was pretty accurate.
BTW, that really isn’t a good book to pick up if you’re trying to sleep, but you probably figured that out.
