Last Movie Watched [2]

I have no idea how pot got into the information I posted.
Believe me no drugs are use on a submarine, (Boat).

Drugs bring on mistakes. One mistake by one crew member can get everybody dead on the Boats. One lost Boat with all hands and one failed mission.

And what makes you assume we were not targets. I believe being shot at with small arms and mortars makes us a target.

Doing beach recons and delivering sneaky people to the beach some times is hazardous to ones health.

Layback Bear
USS Perch APSS-313
USS Volador SS-490

Layback Bear said:

And what makes you assume we were not targets. I believe being shot at with small arms and mortars makes us a target.

Doing beach recons and delivering sneaky people to the beach some times is hazardous to ones health.

Layback Bear
USS Perch APSS-313
USS Volador SS-490

Of course you are a target from above and below.

It's a easy misunderstanding.

The USS Perch APSS-313 was the last boat in the US Navy that did the things we did in the fashion we did them.
It was the last boat in the US Navy that surface Gun Action because we were the last boat that had guns and a Gunners Mate in the US Navy. We also did sneaky things from under the water.

Ludwig (SP) was his name. He got killed.

These might help folks understand.





Then men in the picture below were known as Montagnards.
As the story goes; they were in Charlies back yard and surrounded. We got a message to try and save them. If we didn't get their in time they would of been wiped out.
We stopped what we were doing, what ever that was and did flank speed and got them off of the beach.
Pissed off Charlie. They loved to kill Montagnards.

Yes Layback Bear, I understand very well what you were doing. They used to call them U-boats floating coffins during the war in Holland because their work was so risky. Many got blown up.
Being born in 1951, I have been so lucky (up till now) to live without a war but my mother and grandmother. told me all about 1939 - 1945 in Holland. We still lived in the same big old house (two under one roof ) and they had jews on the attic. When there was an infall, the "crauts" would always start on one end of the street and move up, so they always had the time to move the fugitives from one attic to the other. It was very dangerous, you got killed on the side if they found them but many took the risk.

My grandmother once attacked a german with a breadknife because he was too rude. In the end, of the war they had confiscated the ground floor, that was during the hunger winter. Some would put (secretly) some food on the staircase for my family.

A little history that has been forgotten by most of the people living today.
I was a proud member of the last WW-II submarine that went to war; Vietnam. The USS Perch APSS-313.
WW-II submarines were nick named by many in various parts of the world.

*Smoke boats because of the diesel engines. It's impossible to remove this smell from you garments even with dry cleaning.
*Pig boats because of the smell of the boat and the crew. Once at sea your body didn't touch soap and water until we were back to in port. Except food handlers, they washed their hand and arms often.
*The ladies in the bars in Japan called us sewer pipe sailors. They could smell us coming. Soap and water would not remove this smell until several days in port.

Remember it's very crowed, hot, smelly, which after time you get use to.
Their really isn't much rest. If your not on duty their is always training.
The Captain on the Perch, T.M. Dykers Jr believe a crew that trained together stayed alive together. Remember again on a boat one mistake by one member you can loose a boat and all hands. Mistakes are not permitted.
You will loose all sense of time, to this day time mean very little.

I'm one of the lucky ones that has been high on air. Sometimes you have to stay under longer than desired and the air runs low on oxygen a match or Zipo will not light. When we did come up and opened the conning tower hatch the fresh air would make you high. Every cell in you body has been in pain because of lack of oxygen and goes somewhat happy when it does finally get some fresh air.

Here is something that is well worth watching. A little history few know of or will remember. You will also notice that the uniform of the day was not quite as military as one might think when we were aboard.

I was gonna watch it but has to wait till tonight because one and a half hours.

Did you read this book ?

The Bravest Man Richard O'Kane

"It's a big ocean," Dick O'Kane once told me. "You don't have to find the enemy if you don't want to."
O'Kane was 60 when we met. He was a compact man, straight as a ramrod, with a small smile and bushy eyebrows. He loved to talk, especially on technical matters, but he seldom spoke about what it was like to be a submariner in the Pacific, in a war that claimed the lives of 22% of the Americans who went to sea in the pig boats, as submarines were called. It was a pleasure to meet him again in "The Bravest Man" and to learn more about his remarkable accomplishments in World War II.
That a submariner need not find the enemy was brought home to O'Kane in 1942 on his first patrol in Wahoo, under an older captain who had learned caution in the peacetime Navy. The cautious skipper was replaced by Dudley "Mush" Morton, who with O'Kane's support made Wahoo the deadliest American boat in the Pacific, sinking nine ships on one ferocious patrol through the Yellow Sea, between China and Korea. "You can't afford to flinch," Morton said; "you can't afford to give up. You must constantly keep 'rassling, and keep shooting till you destroy him."
Wahoo was later lost with all hands, not including O'Kane, who by then -- the fall of 1943 -- had command of Tang. He soon proved that he too had a great desire to keep 'rassling and to sink Japanese ships, despite the second-rate torpedoes supplied to American submarines. On its first patrol, Tang sank five ships; on its second, it rescued 22 American airmen, shot down in the battle for Truk at the center of the Pacific's Caroline Islands. On its fourth patrol, it set a U.S. record by sending 10 enemy ships to the bottom, despite new torpedoes that were sometimes as balky as the old.
As a skipper, Richard O'Kane was audacious, persistent and inventive.Read more ›

It came out in 2009 so quite a long time after the war and not the first book about the remarkable man. I very much enjoyed it and learned a lot.