Category: Navy

An Irish Mystery Submarine?

It started with a newspaper clipping. A yellowed scrap from the Hope Pioneer, dated July 8, 1920. One of those curious little stories buried deep inside the paper, just above the church picnic announcements and well below the latest grain prices. It claimed that the Irish revolutionaries, in a bold move that sounded half like a punchline and half like a legend, had once considered buying a submarine. Not just any submarine. One built right here in America. The tale went that the whole enterprise fizzled when the boat was struck by a coal barge in Long Island Sound and sank during its trial run. Just like that, the dream went under.

Or… did it?

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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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The Peanut Boat

She slipped into the water at Newport News on a warm August day in 1965, sleek and silent like the role she was built to play. But the USS George Washington Carver (SSBN-656) was more than just a machine. She was a symbol. Named for an African-American scientist who had turned peanut shells into salvation for poor farmers, she stood out in a fleet named for politicians, admirals, and mythic figures. Her sponsor, the legendary contralto Marian Anderson, broke another barrier when she christened the boat, the first African-American woman to do so. And when her first crew walked aboard, they knew they weren’t just stepping onto a submarine. They were becoming part of something bigger.

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