Month: June 2025

Shortest and Saltiest

On June 27, 1970, a reporter with a poetic bent described Admiral John S. McCain Jr. as the shortest, saltiest, and most incorrigible admiral in the Navy. That reporter was Col. R.D. Heinl Jr., and he was not exaggerating. McCain, standing barely five-foot-seven, paced the floor of his headquarters in Pearl Harbor with a cigar clenched in his teeth. He commanded the largest forward-deployed force in American history. His authority reached across 500 ships, 7,500 aircraft, and nearly a million servicemen scattered throughout the Pacific from the Golden Gate to the Indian Ocean.

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Operation Iceberg

Five and a half years ago, I was sitting at a table on a Saturday morning with one of our newest Base members at the time. He had been a Sonar Tech and was DBF to the core. As we talked about his story, he told me that his adventures had included going under the ice… in a diesel boat.

Look, I am fascinated by under ice ops, but the idea of a diesel boat going under the ice for more than a quick duck seemed… insane. He laughed. “It was, but we did it.”

At the time I had no idea about Operation Iceberg, the Navy’s 1946 expedition under the overall Operation Nanook, to send submarines into the Arctic Ocean. Tom (although he qualified in 1962 aboard USS Cutlass SS-478) wasn’t old enough to have been a participant, but he certainly would have understood it.

One of my least favorite parts of being a USSVI Base Commander were the Eternal Patrol notices and the funerals. Tom was a great guy, and I was looking forward to a lot more discussions about these kinds of things. But it wasn’t to be.

So this article is dedicated to the memory of STSCS(SS) Tom Lee, departed on Eternal Patrol on May 8, 2020.

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Legacy of Sailfish

On June 24, 1948, readers of The North Adams Transcript opened their paper to find a quiet notice tucked amid the day’s dispatches: the old submarine Sailfish had been sold for scrap. No fanfare, no ceremony. Just a line confirming that one of the most storied submarines in American naval history had reached her end. To most readers, it might have meant little. But to those who knew her story—those who had followed her transformation from the sunken Squalus to the battle-hardened Sailfish—it marked the closing chapter of a saga that began with tragedy, rose through heroism, and sailed deep into the waters of legend.

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