Fleet Plan of the Day
Each of the 394 submarines on the Cold War Boats site has a Master Sailing List, which are intended to list every known shipmate that served on that boat.
When you register and list your commands on your user profile, you automatically appear on each boat's Master Sailing List.
As you might imagine, a project of this magnitude will always be a work in progress, which depends on shipmates like you registering, and volunteers inputing years of Enlisted and Officer Personnel Diaries.
The USS GRENADIER (SS 525) is an example of the one such volunteer effort. While many of these shipmates are still listed as missing, meaning not registered with Cold War Boats, many have already shipped their oars, and the Eternal Patrol lists are one way we honor their sacrifice.
I encourage you to visit your commands and count yourself among your shipmates.
You must be registered to view the Master Sailing Lists (privacy protection) but that is the point!
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New ship's brochures posted for the USS RAY (SSN 653) courtesy of John Jones. Change of Command brochures from 83 and 86, a Launching brochure from 21 JUN 1966, and an undated Welcome Aboard brochure.
Let me know if you have any to add to the USS RAY (SSN 653) collection.
Click here to go to THE LOGROOM >> ARCHIVES >> SHIP'S BROCHURES.
Let your Skate shipmates know your plans for the USS SKATE (SSN 578) reunion at the USSVI Convention in Cleveland, OH this August.
RSVP by clicking here, and register with Cold War Boats while you are at it!
We are always looking to beef up our Logroom Archives at www.coldwarboats.org. This week, the specific artifact quest is watchbills.
A watchbill specified both section assignments and watch stations. As a result, each watchbill is a unique list of names; a snapshot in time of crew composition and assignments.
These are the kind of documents that would typically get discarded as they were replaced, so they seem to be relatively rare. If you are one of the dedicated hoarders that has held onto a watchbill spirited away during your time on board Cold War commands, we’d gladly help you join the ranks of contributors here at Cold War Boats by adding it to the Legroom Archives for a specific boat, ship, or shore facility.
Welcome Aboard brochures were a common sight on Cold War boats. Maintained by the Ship’s Office, these brief pamphlets were handed out to visitors, riders, and the new shipmates reporting aboard.
While not useful enough to be used for boat quals, they often contained a brief history of the boat, a brief bio on the CO, sometimes the XO, and the omnipresent standard safety briefing…”Please remain in your seats with your seatbelts fastened,” or the boat equivalent!
Deck Logs were the UNCLASSIFIED records of ship's position, arrival and departure ports, and significant UNCLASSIFIED events that occurred during an average day in the life of the USS WILLIAM H. BATES (SSN 680).
One could determine the location, how that position was determined, which port the boat departed from, where it was heading, and who had the OOD at any given moment during the day.
Significant events recorded included casting off, mooring, emergencies like fires and injuries, reactor startups and shutdowns, drills that affected the ship as a whole, and even adminsitrative actions like Captain's Mast.
Deck Logs for January, May, and October 1978 have been recently uploaded to the SSN 680 site.
These three months show the full range of ship's activity recorded in the logs, from the sheer boredom of daily routine tied to the pier, through fast cruise, underway surfaced, submerging and surfacing, and drills and routine tedium that help fill our days on the 680. By October, we were somewhere in the Sea of None of Your Business doing what we were trained to do, so the October log is essentially empty, it being classified and all.
The Cold War Boats website has posted three logroom archive articles from the spring of 1968, courtesy of Carl Seitz, a shipmate from the USS HALIBUT (SSGN 587). These bi-monthly newsletters, titled "Periscope," were published by SUBMARINE FLOTILLA ONE at SUBASE POINT LOMA and offer a fascinating glimpse into life aboard submarines during the late sixties.
The first of our Periscopes, from April 19, 1968, highlights the return of the USS SEGUNDO (SS 398) and the USS CAIMAN (AGSS 323) from WestPac, the USS FLORIKAN (ASR 9) on her twenty-fifth anniversary, the 68th anniversary celebration of the Submarine Service, along with advancements and recognition of the contributions of shipmates of all local commands.
