Sea Stories

U.S. NAVY BRANDY

By Nelson Greer former EN1(SS) Maybe we were doing an anti-submarine warfare exercise with some ancient black-smoke-belching destroyer on that day in 1963. Or perhaps we were performing precision periscope practice by peering at a panoply of people surfing and sunning on the South Shore of Oahu at Sandy Beach.…

Sea Stories – The Infamous Toilet Paper Letter

By Lieutenant Commander J.W. Coe | June 11, 1942 Lieutenant Commander James W. Coe was Commanding Officer of the USS Skipjack (SS 184) when he wrote his famous “Toilet Paper” letter to the Mare Island Supply Office. USS SKIPJACK June 11, 1942 From: Commanding OfficerTo: Supply Officer, Navy Yard, Mare…

Sea Stories – Not Your Average Patrol

By Nelson R. Greer EN2(SS) Submarine Veteran Chapter 1. DEPARTURE OF A SHIPMATE. And there we were!       Aboard the USS Tiru (SS 416), September 1967; This Northern Run started off like most diesel submarine Cold War patrols did. We were told not to tell anyone we were leaving our home…

Bill Dillon the Last Surviving Crew Member of USS Sailfish

Bill Dillon was a submariner on the USS Sailfish, a radioman first class, and collaborated with the author Stephen L. Moore to tell the harrowing story of how the Sailfish sunk a Japanese Carrier. Today, he is the sole survivor of the 200 men he served with on the Sailfish,…

The Sub That Sank a Train

Submarine: 1. Train: 0. By Ford Murray, USS Missouri Tour Guide In 1973 an Italian submarine named Enrique Tazzoli was sold for a paltry $100,000 as scrap metal. The submarine, given to the Italian Navy in 1953 was actually an incredible veteran of World War II service with a heritage…

The Submariner

Dr. Joyce Brothers The tragic loss of the submarine Thresher and 129 men had a special kind of impact on the nation …..a special kind of sadness, mixed with universal admiration for the men who choose this type of work. One could not mention the Thresher without observing, in the…

Sea Stories – The Navy Pen

By Stan Worthley, RMCM(SS) Ret. Yesterday, the corpsman at pharmacy at the U.S. Navy Hospital Yokosuka handed me a Skillcraft pen to sign for an RX. I thought OMG! They still have them. I asked if I could have it and, of course, he said – sure. Its on my desk now. That…

Eugene Gaito – Submarine Sailor “Long Gone But Not Forgotten”

Honolulu Advertiser January 8, 2019 Recently as I was strolling around the USS Bowfin Museum grounds at Pearl Harbor, I ran across a plaque listing the 300 plus crew members who served on her during the course of World War II. I barely glanced at it as I passed, but…

Fun on the Cusk

By Nelson (Maynard) Greer, EN1(SS) Damn, we had fun.  Some of it sure didn’t seem much like fun at the time, but looking back through the mists of time, it was all fun. It was summertime, 1965, and the USS Cusk (SS 348) took on a full load of food and fuel, left…