Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2006/07/28
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Well in WWII that was true. Today the very nature of the service is quite different. Peace-time missions are still dangerous but also highly vital to the national security. I'm a bit sorry to hear Ted speak poorly of the Canadian submariners. We have always respected the skills of our fellow sailors to the north. They play ASW hard and well. All submarining is dangerous. It takes a culture that understands the dangers and trains constantly to deal with them. The Canadians had a bad break that cost them dearly. It happened to us last year when the USS SAN FRANCISCO ran into an underwater mountain peak at flank speed killing a young sailor and injuring quite a few crewmen. They were damn lucky to get the boat to the surface and all that training that both crews did let them save their boats and go home again. Still, I feel better about my son when he's out on a mission than I do when he's tooling around Seattle. Out there, at sea, his shipmates have his back and he has theirs. The most telling scenes in "Das Boot" happen toward the end when they are struggling to get off the bottom. It's the ultimate meaning of what it's like be be a submariner - that you never give up, you try one thing and then the next and the next until you run out of time to try the next thing. And you know your boat so well that even in the dripping darkness when the air is bad, you're exhausted, and maybe almost hopeless, that you can still work through the systems to try that one more thing that will get you to the surface. I had the priviledge of meeting "Red" Ramage at the PARCHE's launch - a larger than life figure, Medal of Honor winner for a night-time surface action. He was the Real Thing and when he walked through our boat at commissioning everyone stood taller as if his footsteps on the deck plates imbued us with that first PARCHE 's(384) spirit. My son tells me that the same feeling happened when an ex-CO of SEAWOLF walked through the CARTER after commissioning. They didn't know everything SEAWOLF had done in her time, but they knew how real and vital that mission was and how deeply dangerous it was. For a long time the recruiting poster for the submarine service read "Pride Runs Deep". It's true in every submarine service worth its salt. Soviet, American, UK, Canadian, German - we all share the common war against the sea that is all too willing to take the careless, negligant or unlucky. The crews of the THRESHER and SCORPIAN are proof. Adam On 7/28/06, Lawrence Zeitlin <lrzeitlin@optonline.net> wrote: > > On Jul 28, 2006, at 9:28 AM, lug-request@leica-users.org wrote: > > > 'm not sure abou the great anti-war film but it's certainly the best > > submarine film every made. > > My NROTC college roommate was dissuaded from joining the submarine > service a few wars ago when he was informed that in submarines, the > casualty rate and the fatality rate were almost identical. > > Larry Z > > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information >