Fleet Plan of the Day
A major on-going project at Cold War Boats is the gathering of records and documents that allow us to honor each and every shipmate that served on boats during the Cold War from 1946 to 1991 by adding their names to our Master Personnel Roster.
Yesterday, with the addition of the 112 shipmates from the inactivation crew of the USS ANDREW JACKSON (SSBB 619), Cold War Boats surpassed our first milestone of 10,000 names with a total of 10,016.
These names represent those who served in submarines over the 45 years of the Cold War. Some of those are currently registered, many of them are listed as missing, meaning we have no contact information for them, and many more have crossed the bar and are listed as on Eternal Patrol.
All are honored in the ranks of those who served.
So we set out for our next milestone, 20,000, a daunting task, but only a drop in the bucket of the estimated 400,000 names we expect to find.
If you want to make sure you are included, or to see who is currently listed on the commands you served on, visit coldwarboats.org. You must register and log in to see names other than those on Eternal Patrol.
If you would like to help in this endeavor by:
- locating and acquiring Personnel Diaries, commissioning, inactivation, and decommissioning brochures, and other documents, or
- Researching missing shipmates to discover contact information, or obituaries, or
- Participating in data entry for a specific boat, or
- Submitting other information that might add names to the roster,
Then contact me, Brad Williamson, at , or our Sailing List Manager, Jim Hart, at .
Regardless, if you aren’t currently registered at coldwarboats.org, then get there and make it so.
There is not a moment to lose!
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It is now the 2nd of September, and summer is effectively over, leaving me wondering how it vanished so quickly. By now, you’ve probably given up hope on REGROUPEX 25, and rightly so. Only four months left in the year, and about half of that will focus on the holiday season, which leaves little room at the inn for a submarine reunion.
Time and circumstances have conspired against us, and it is with some reluctance that I officially ‘pull the plug’ on an east coast REGROUPEX 25. As much as I wanted to make it happen this year, I simply was not able to accomplish the task and deliver the reunion experience you have come to expect.
A few photos regarding progress on the USS CINCINNATI (SSN 693) memorial from Nick Ferrato of Cincinnati. I’m particularly impressed by the signage “Honoring Cold War Veterans”! It seems that is the first time I’ve seen such a tribute in writing.
It was just over 48 years ago, probably early June 1977, and I was sitting at a long table down the middle of a barracks in Camp Nimitz at San Diego RTC, doodling on a scrap of paper my admittedly primitive idea for a flag worthy of Company 126. Dozens of other recruits gathered around, some with more artistic talent than myself, fortunately, that would take that seed of an idea and turn it into reality.
We spent a couple of months marching under that flag, and doing some serious behind-kicking in the many competitions that kept boot camp interesting. Everywhere we went, that flag led the way and anchored us to our fragile identity as a cohesive unit labeled simply 77-126.
Then we were gone. Off to our first schools and duty stations, some for storied careers, and others just using the Navy as a stepping stone to other adventures. I’m sure our company commanders AO1 Gilbert and QM1 Whalen didn’t waste any time grieving over our parting, but Sam Gilbert managed to hang onto the 126 guidon, perhaps because there was nothing better to do with it, and it seemed important enough to hang on to it.
Hang on to it he did.
Today, we remember...
We set aside this day, Memorial Day, to honor those military personnel who died serving in the United States Armed Forces, and that number is so great as to be hard to grasp.
We are grateful, we give thanks, and we acknowledge the sacrifice made by so many, but unless you personally know someone who gave their life serving, the sheer magnitude of numbers renders those we remember nearly anonymous.
Perhaps we focus on those lost only in the submarine community, but even the 3506 submarine officers and men lost during World War II are difficult to hold in your head, and that doesn’t include those lost before or since.
Even bounding our count with the duration of the Cold War, from 1946 to 1991, produces hundreds of names from the well-remembered USS THRESHER (SSN 593) and the USS SCORPION (SSN 589) to the lesser known USS COCHINO (SS 345)/USS TUSK (SS 426) incident, and many others lost one or two at a time.
If you were at the 680 reunion in Las Vegas last week, and likely even if you weren’t, you know I can’t resist the opportunity for story-telling. Nothing like a good sea-story to reconnect, share a few laughs, and remind us of how many years it’s been since we last set foot in Ops Middle Level.
Now, for the first time ever you will have the opportunity to join me nationwide via the magic of radio and the internet. I have been invited to join radio & TV personality, Steve Kates AKA Dr. Sky, as we discuss life on a submarine in contrast to life in outer space, our very own Cold War Boats Association, and probably everything in between.
Mark your calendars for this Saturday evening, the 17th of May, and join us at 2100 (9:00 pm) Pacific - midnight Eastern time, for two hours of interesting banter about submarine life and why that remains so important to us after all these years.
