I joined the Navy just over 50 years ago. On March 18, 1948 I took the oath and was sworn in as a Seaman/2C USNR. I was a NROTC Contract student at University of Southern California until commissioning in June 1952.

First ship was USS HELENA (CA-75), attended the 100th Submarine School Class with George Fraser in 1955-56.

First boat was USS SEA FOX (SS-402) from 1956 to 1958, then on to USS K-3 (BONITA) where we served as an underway target for a live nuclear depth charge test in South Pacific.

Shore duty in 1959 at Fleet Sonar School, San Diego, but was quickly detached to attend Intelligence Post Graduate School.

Next was a tour as the first Intelligence Officer on COMSUBGRUWESTPAC Staff (later SUBFLOT SEVEN). Yes this job had a lot to do with planning and directing special operations.

In 1962 I reported to USS CAIMAN (SS-323) as XO. Then another spook job at the National Security Agency (NSA).

Commanded USS TUNNY (APSS-282) - which was the best tour of my career. TUNNY was homeported in Subic Bay RPI. We relieved USS PERCH (SS-313) - and in so doing the two crews swapped. The former PERCH crew crossed the brow and became TUNNY Tigers. The only problem is that PERCH was EB design while TUNNY was Portsmouth design. The first couple of weeks of operations thereafter caused my pucker string to draw tighter. The hairiest single event of my tour was an ORI given by Captain Fred Berry, Chief Staff Officer CSF-7, a few weeks later.

After shooting torpedoes in Sagami Wan, Japan, he directed us to snorkel across the mouth of Tokyo Bay at night while transiting to point to be photographed the next morning. Captain Berry turned in for the night. That snorkel transit was extremely frightening. Had I not been brand new in command I woild have never done it. As it was, the XO was on #2 scope and I was on #1 all night long, trying not to play "bumper car" with all of the merchant and fishing traffic which was coming at us from all directions. If we had shut down from snorkeling to evade by going deep, we could have never gotten back to periscope depth again. After that the operations in Viet Nam didn't seem as hairy.

After Tunny I went to two years of Russian Language School and attache training, then off for two years in Moscow from 1969 TO 1971. Hawaii was the reward for freezing my cajones off in lower slobovia, first as Chief Staff Officer than briefly as Commander Oceanographic Systems Pacific (1971-1975. I had done so poorly learning Russian, BuPers gave me another chance, this time with Italian at Monterey. Then on to Rome as Defense and Naval Attache at the Embassy. This tour lasted only three "short" years. During this time I was blessed to be serving concurrently with two Sixth Fleet Commanders who were submariners, Admiral Harry Train and Jim Watkins.

The boats at La Maddelena required some political care and feeding, especially when USS RAY collided with the bottom south of Sicily, bending her bow 5 degrees to port. In order to keep the Italian government from falling over this incident (allowing the damaged RAY to come into La Maddelena) it was necessary to go to general quarters with Admiral Rickover and do something he absolutely was 100% against. That was to to take a member of Parliment, a former Italian naval officer, on a tour through the engineering and reactor spaces so he could attest to the press and opposition politicians (communists) that there was no damage. In so doing the kindly old gentleman ripped me several new posterior orifices.

My sunset tour was in San Francisco as Commanding Officer NIS SF.

I retired in 1983 and went to work for Visa International.

Since retiring last year, I have enjoyed getting reacquainted with the navy and submarine force. I particularily enjoy reading the posts on this BBS.

The combination of comradship and needling remind me of old times.

Illigitime Non Carborundum and don't give up the fight to preserve the state on silver dolphins.