Sea Stories

The living conditions were kinda strange weren’t they?

Hot racking in the TR middle top racks and have the cranks spill some bug juice and waking up on a wet sticky bed
with bug juice pouring down the deck plates. Of course, couldn’t take a shower as that was for storage. No wonder
the small cramped space outside the CO’s stateroom in lower level was full of folks trying to get some sleep on
Kapocks, (until the COW would vent the negative tank) What was the name of that area? Never could figure out what
the initials stood for.

Also, the time Marvolious Marvin messed his drawers starting the disel and they blew a water slug. He thought for
sure the darn thing had finally blew up.

Oh, the memories

Jeff Knight – Deck div ST div and sailor of appreciation.
jbknight3@worldnet.att.net

FAVORITE MEMORIES:

– Leaving the dry dock in Groton in November of 1979 and having the boat lose power and slam into the pier. What a
team, we were able to get her back in dry-dock that day.

– Luther Peel’s mini baseball bat.

– The Puddle dock

– The Starlight Club

– way to many keggers

– Good Time Charlie’s

– UNH games

– 39 months in the shipyard

– LT. Shoemacker

– If I could only see one old shipmate it would be Timothy J. Springer..maybe then the bad dreams would stop.

– EMC Teebo and speed beer drinking

– some really good football teams

– my all time favorite quality of life issue…” of course the crew showers are secured…where else are we going to stow
the trash bags”.

– air force Debbie

– Springsteen with Bingo in Boston….thanks

– peppermint schnapps

– sluggo

– vegetable meat loaf

– eab bongs

– greasings

– holy cow…them cutout values shut all by themselves

– by the way….who stole the phone in crews mess….the national archive is still looking for them.

– Tony’s Nova

– Greg Gray and Red

– B-52s and rock lobster.

– It’s surprising how many officers from the T2 went on to command submarines…..even a whole bunch who use to
smoke pot in AMR. Not that smoking pot ever happened on the T2…..must be my imagination.

But the greatest memory of the T2 is of a whole bunch of great people. I always bump into people you served on the
boat (mostly at therapy sessions) and no one seems to remember the living conditions (rotten) or the one of a kind
machinery that kept breaking with no repair parts manufactured in the past 20 years. No, the only thing they
remember are pleasant times with a great crew.

–Anonymous Crew-member

Ah, the memories . . . Dave’s right – LUCK had a lot to do with the boat even making it to decommissioning.

I was on from April ’75 to August ’78. I remember Bingo and Bob Boyles and Heck and Art Baker and Steve Burt and
Bucky and Dunkle and MadDog and Spaz and WW a lot of the other guys who are logged into SubmarineSailor.com.
(And I’m proud to say I was qualified on helm/planes by Rookie Grove – who just retired as Master Chief of the
Submarine School. “Local boy makes good.”) (By the way – check out www.classmates.com – they have a database
based on high school graduation and military service. There a quite a few T2 sailors there, too.)

There are also a couple of names from ’78 that I should remember but don’t. The old T2 (and Loucks) had taken a lot
out of me by then, so if I was an A_ _H_ _ _ to you, I sincerely apologize.

If you’ll indulge me, I’m inspired by Bingo and Dave Heckman to recite a couple of my own memories of the T2. Now
twentysomething years later, I’d love to hear YOUR memories. Please do a “reply all” with them for all of us to enjoy.

1. I got to Tullibee out of prototype. On my first day George Ward (E-div LPO) assigned me to help John Cortese put
the DC battery exhaust fan back in after rewind. (I think it was rewound 3 times in my 3? years – could that indicate a
problem?) The fan was on the starboard side of AMS, outboard, forward and behind everything else. The fan was
about 18″ in diameter and there were about 16 bolts in each flange on each side of the 2 rubber isolation boots. For
access to the BACK of the fan there was about 2?” of clearance under it and the same over it. In that 2?” you had to
reach in, put in the bolts behind the fan, hold them in place, install a lock washer and nut on each one and then tighten
them up with a wrench and ratchet. After about 2 hours, Johnny picked up his toolbox and THREW it across the AMS.
I won’t go into his verbiage, as I’m not looking to defend a “free speech on the Internet” suit. Anyway, then he was
gone and I was left to finish it. I think it took me the rest of the day to do 72 bolts. That was my first day. Naturally
when it failed later and had to pulled and put back, guess who got picked because he “already had experience doing it.”

2. I was a nuc IC-man (back when they had such a thing – I guess IC is merged with EM now.) So I spent a lot of time
up forward doing port-and-starboard with Rudy Bagos as Aux Elect Forward. I think we were on the way to the Med
and I’d recently read an article about the Scorpion and what it would have been like as she went down. This article
described a “wall of compressed air” passing through the boat from wherever the hull breached, followed by a wall of
water. One day I was making Aux Elect Forward rounds, I came past Sonar and the After Plotting Table and was just
coming up to the periscope stand when I really and truly felt a W-A-L-L of compressed air rush past me. I broke into a
run for the forward hatch, but I knew I’d never get there in time to even reach it, much less close and dog it. As I
passed Fire Control, COB Colin Ingraham, who was Diving Officer of the Watch, yelled “Hey, John. I forgot to tell you
but I just vented the Negative Tank.” That scared the S_ _ _ out of me.

I am truly interested in everyone else’s experiences on Tullibee. If you have memories please share them with us.

Maybe we can make up a website devoted to tracking down everyone who served on T2 and hearing their memories.
(By the way, have you seen what a brass Tullibee plaque is going for on Ebay? Unbelievable.)

I’m still trying to figure out that part of my life. I know that the important thing from my T2 experience is the people I got
to know and am still learning from. There are so many guys I lost track of (Broken Arrow/Nick Parham, Goober, Mike
Debay, Johnny Cabral, Al Tafa, John LaVoie, Schmuck, Dangerous Dave Dvorak, Earnie Dickson, Ed Bader, etc., etc.,
etc.) If you have addresses for people from the boat, please share them, as well.

ALSO – THERE WAS A CREW PICTURE TAKEN WHEN CHARLIE ARNEST RELIEVED KEN FOLTA – I THINK IT WAS IN
LA MAD (1976?). DOES ANYONE STILL HAVE A COPY OF IT?

Hoping to make it to the reunion next year,

–John Fleitz
Ah, the memories . . . Dave’s right – LUCK had a lot to do with the boat even making it to decommissioning.

I was on from April ’75 to August ’78. I remember Bingo and Bob Boyles and Heck and Art Baker and Steve Burt and
Bucky and Dunkle and MadDog and Spaz and WW a lot of the other guys who are logged into SubmarineSailor.com.
(And I’m proud to say I was qualified on helm/planes by Rookie Grove – who just retired as Master Chief of the
Submarine School. “Local boy makes good.”) (By the way – check out www.classmates.com – they have a database
based on high school graduation and military service. There a quite a few T2 sailors there, too.)

There are also a couple of names from ’78 that I should remember but don’t. The old T2 (and Loucks) had taken a lot
out of me by then, so if I was an A_ _H_ _ _ to you, I sincerely apologize.

If you’ll indulge me, I’m inspired by Bingo and Dave Heckman to recite a couple of my own memories of the T2. Now
twentysomething years later, I’d love to hear YOUR memories. Please do a “reply all” with them for all of us to enjoy.

1. I got to Tullibee out of prototype. On my first day George Ward (E-div LPO) assigned me to help John Cortese put
the DC battery exhaust fan back in after rewind. (I think it was rewound 3 times in my 3? years – could that indicate a
problem?) The fan was on the starboard side of AMS, outboard, forward and behind everything else. The fan was
about 18″ in diameter and there were about 16 bolts in each flange on each side of the 2 rubber isolation boots. For
access to the BACK of the fan there was about 2?” of clearance under it and the same over it. In that 2?” you had to
reach in, put in the bolts behind the fan, hold them in place, install a lock washer and nut on each one and then tighten
them up with a wrench and ratchet. After about 2 hours, Johnny picked up his toolbox and THREW it across the AMS.
I won’t go into his verbiage, as I’m not looking to defend a “free speech on the Internet” suit. Anyway, then he was
gone and I was left to finish it. I think it took me the rest of the day to do 72 bolts. That was my first day. Naturally
when it failed later and had to pulled and put back, guess who got picked because he “already had experience doing it.”

2. I was a nuc IC-man (back when they had such a thing – I guess IC is merged with EM now.) So I spent a lot of time
up forward doing port-and-starboard with Rudy Bagos as Aux Elect Forward. I think we were on the way to the Med
and I’d recently read an article about the Scorpion and what it would have been like as she went down. This article
described a “wall of compressed air” passing through the boat from wherever the hull breached, followed by a wall of
water. One day I was making Aux Elect Forward rounds, I came past Sonar and the After Plotting Table and was just
coming up to the periscope stand when I really and truly felt a W-A-L-L of compressed air rush past me. I broke into a
run for the forward hatch, but I knew I’d never get there in time to even reach it, much less close and dog it. As I
passed Fire Control, COB Colin Ingraham, who was Diving Officer of the Watch, yelled “Hey, John. I forgot to tell you
but I just vented the Negative Tank.” That scared the S_ _ _ out of me.

I am truly interested in everyone else’s experiences on Tullibee. If you have memories please share them with us.

Maybe we can make up a website devoted to tracking down everyone who served on T2 and hearing their memories.
(By the way, have you seen what a brass Tullibee plaque is going for on Ebay? Unbelievable.)

I’m still trying to figure out that part of my life. I know that the important thing from my T2 experience is the people I got
to know and am still learning from. There are so many guys I lost track of (Broken Arrow/Nick Parham, Goober, Mike
Debay, Johnny Cabral, Al Tafa, John LaVoie, Schmuck, Dangerous Dave Dvorak, Earnie Dickson, Ed Bader, etc., etc.,
etc.) If you have addresses for people from the boat, please share them, as well.

ALSO – THERE WAS A CREW PICTURE TAKEN WHEN CHARLIE ARNEST RELIEVED KEN FOLTA – I THINK IT WAS IN
LA MAD (1976?). DOES ANYONE STILL HAVE A COPY OF IT?

Hoping to make it to the reunion next year,

–John Fleitz
johnandmarcia13@buckeye-express.com

Hi everyone. I was on the T2 from ”78 – ’82. I remember Bingo…Hi Bingo. I lived through the great sinking in the
Med (broken shaft) as well as the fried RPC incident (the vomiting Commodore) in Lamadellina, the contaminated
ORSE Board, a few fires, at least one other flooding incident, an exploding MG, an exploding shore power
cable…you know you guys that were onboard
after ’82 were lucky to even have a boat. I know Bingo remembers all of that stuff! By the way, hi Bucky…I
remember foosball in NL. Wrong Way Gallagher…contrary to your prediction I did live past the age of 24 (by the
grace of God), and I’m doing quite well. Tony K., I remember a beach in Bermuda – ’nuff said. Spaz, I won’t even say
over email what I remember…just send money and I’ll keep my mouth shut. No, really, I hope you guys are all doing
well. I’m working in the RadEngineering group at
PVNGS out in Phoenix…been here for a while. I’ve got a beautiful wife and 2 kids who know nothing about my jaded
Navy past. Left several of the boys from the T2 back at TMI in ’82 (remember Ultra-man?). I haven’t heard from my
old running mate Kevin Jesenski (KJ) since I got out. I remember we spent 10 years in combat together one month in
Rhoda, Spain. Yep, we were lucky to make it out alive. Let me know if any of you know where he is.

A reunion sounds very intriguing. It’s unlikely that I could attend since I live on the west coast, but keep me updated.

Dave Heckman
dheckman@apsc.com

Hey Gary,
I was trying to remember my favorite sea story and had so many good ones.. I realized something. Of all the crap and
weird shit that happened to us all, it was the T2 crew that stuck out as my favorite part of being there. No matter what
happened to the boat we were a great crew, in port and at sea. No matter what other ships had to say about the poor
old boat, when they got one of us to ride on their boat they realized how much better a T2 sailor was than regular
sailor the jokes would stop after they saw how much better we could do things and how easy it was for us take the
mission with a boat that didn’t pull it’s own drills!! (regular sailors = sailors on boats that had current equipment,
plenty of berthing, standard equipment that could be ordered without someone asking what the hell it was, and crews
that were such cliques that they looked like a girls room at a junior high dance.) We were always a great crew.. we
pulled some shit on each other but, if you weren’t a T2 sailor keep your hands off and your mouth shut around our
guys!! That’s my best memory of the T2 Gary, all great guys that could do anything with less than nothing to make
an old, one of a kind, cruel bitch run as long as possible and do “just one more mission.” I’ll think of some good
stories… but just wanted to pass that on.

SGT Dean A. Cosentino
B Company, 1st RGMT, 181BAT, 26th BDE, 29th DIV
also known as “Tino” or “Mr. 597” in a Squadron 2 galaxy far far away…….
but not forgotten!
boat710@aol.com

T2 memories and not in any particular order…

Fires, fuel element failure, steam leak, running into the pier, sand in engine
room lower level, shaft break, flooding, silent scrams, stern plane jam,
periscope jam, diesel breakdown requiring complete rebuild in LaMad, shore power
cable blowing up, cutting the towed balloon, oxygen tanks empty-no smoking-but
candles at dinner in the ward room, stuck on a sandbar in Cocoa Beach, RO
cutting off his finger at the hatch going down into the Rx Compartment,
Jimmy Pistolli tours to Mount Vesuvius, Cameo Factory, and Pompeii. And that
lunch before the Pompeii tour with all the wine, the guy on the squeezebox
singing Santa Lucia and other Italian songs, I cannot remember too much of
Pompeii ( inebriated) but my pictures show I saw an awful lot of it.

Climbing around inside the Nazi underground submarine base in Tunisia

Visiting the Ruins of Carthage

Climbing to the top of the rock of Gibraltar

Short Day Trip to Florence and Pisa, climbing to the top of the leaning tower in
Pisa and the top of some church in Florence

On a 4 day trip to Rome taking the launch, bus, plane, train, and cruise ship
there and back

As far as the eye can see fields of sunflowers in Spain

In Rota, being escorted by security in a long line of T2 sailors back to the sub
while Mark McCarthy plays his harmonica after shutting down the club, well I
think the club shutdown early because of us
Isle of Capri

Starting a short timers chain at 1305 days while sitting a sightglass watch in
the tunnel

Monday morning massacre
Mediterranean swim call
The tongue of the ocean torpedo shoots, a bunch of us riding around Andros
island in a Range Rover driven by an English scientist team,

Drill time in engineering, the Officers would pull one and then the Tullibee
would pull one. Single loop here we come again

Coming in from sea one afternoon after a 2 week run and going back out the next
morning because the Nautilus was broke down.

Pulling into Savannah Georgia after the SSTG develops a casing steam leak,
pulling up alongside the pier and I proudly earning the longest lanyard with
attached monkey fist, the aft deck officer tells me to not f *** up because
there would be alot of brass on the pier and we wanted to make a good
impression. I hurl the lanyard and watch as it gets caught up in the antennas,
circles the T2’s sail and just misses the Captain’s head by a few inches. I
thought I would die…….laughing.

Katy, Nyrady, Habermeyer, Demlein

Lights out, movie time in the crews mess, Ensign JG Katy (RC Div Officer)
walks through the area and somebody grabs him, throws him down on the table and
holds him while someone else puts a hickey on the top of his bald head. Boy, was
he was pissed. He never found out who did it.

$1.298 books in maneuvering

Sitting by the starboard torpedo tubes, reading a Playboy (sure, or at least
looking at the pictures), when I over hear the cry from Maneuvering on the 2MC
“Flooding in the Engineroom”, grabbing the power cord for the submersible pump
and following Bingo who has grabbed the submersible pump and we run back to
Engine Room during the shaft/flooding incident

XO ordering the drain pump to pump during the shaft incident

Rx scram caused by yours truly, NIs do not overlap, trying to calibrate them as
we seriously rock port to starboard due to an a s s kicking storm above us,
Comodore puking up forward, Diesel continues to flood out and the forward guys
must don EABs due to carbon monoxide, I’m disqualified Reactor Operator, a real
bad day for most of us

loading TDU weights

I was messcranking, I has just made up and set on the floor a 5 gallon container
of green bug juice and the Captain decides to hold drills. Jam dive drills, I
watch as the container of green bug slides forward, falls over, lid pops off and
a wave of green bug juice washes into the control room past radio land and sonar
land.

Prather Ellsberry and Chief Cook as an EOOW and EWS team in the engineroom, you
could not find a better pair for ORSE

Red Tag specials

Eating squid caught off the barge in Kittery, Maine
You know, for all the bads times I usually say I had, I really cannot remember
that many.
What I miss the most is the camaraderie, friendship and good times you cannot
find anywhere else except on a submarine. At least I have not been able to find
it.
It wasn’t just a crew, it was a family. I hope you remember it that way as
well.
Take Care,
Michael D. Willing (WW)
mwillin1@txu.com

My memories are good, no… real good.

Howdy Shipmates,

Oh the memories. . . I knew it was just a matter of time before somebody mentioned Burkhalter, old Marvelous
Marvin.

My favorite memory of him is him standing on the work badge with his pants around his ankles and his thumbs in
the vice, not once-but twice! Marvin telling Doc that his thumbs hurt, Doc promising to treat them as soon as he got
them out of the vice. Chief Banister operating the vice, smile as big as he was at the time (before he lost all that
weight). I was packing the bearings with graphite, you might say. But with Marvin, greasing was definitely daily PMS.

Banister was quite fond of beating us too Joe, not as fond of it as Luther Peel was, but definitely into inflicting pain
on A-gangers. I remember Greg Gray and I jumping him on the work badge. We scooted his big ass across the
bench, it took both of us, Banister ended up with a back full of splinters, Greg and I each lost a handful of hair!
Speaking of pain and Luther, wasn’t he also proficient with a flashlight, Joe? I remember the first time he kicked my
ass in his office, you were happy for me. . .you told me that it showed that he liked me and you were right!

Then there was the XO, Kadlick I think his name was. . .a real prick and one sea-sick SOB. I always felt bad about
making him puke when we were on the surface, rigged for black. You were the COW, and a mercy puker, by the
time if was over, I was the only one that hadn’t puked. You held out for a while, but when the messenger blew
chunks trying to clean off the SCP, you lost it too. As the AOW, I just roved on out of control.

I remember saving all the sleazy jobs until Mr. Pilsbury had the duty. He and I fixed that shift valve on the drain
pump on the mid watch, it wasn’t just PFM. But Capt. Kosher was smart enough not to press the issue he quietly
accepted his good fortune and didn’t ask any questions. He was a great Skipper! Mr. P was cool too, a fireman
trapped in a Lt’s. body.

Then there was Tony Knestaut, insisting on stopping on pick up a sink that somebody had abandoned on the
Mapleview exit off route one. You probably don’t even remember that Tony, you were pretty lit-but that sink was in
my trunk for months! Who could forget “sign my skivvies” when Tony checked out.

Does anyone remember Parmalee suckering Marvin into the weight losing contest? Parmalee must have had fifty
pounds of tools hidden on him for the weigh-in. Marvin ate salad and celery, Parmalee ate like a king. Marvin lost
two pounds, Parmalee lost fifty! He’s probably still trying to figure out what happened.

Oh we were mean, but there was no doubt that if anybody would have touched a hair on any of our heads,
including Marvin’s, we’d been out in force looking for blood. That was the Tullibee, in a word-TIGHT!

One last thought Joe, Barbara was curious why there was no mention of the dog track in Seabrook, or the lucky
cheese pizza with crushed red pepper.

Regards,

Eric (Smitty) Smith
Ericsmith@peoplePC.com

These are just a few, and I don’t want to pick on any individual, but Henry Engo was a TRUE Tullibee sailor!

Flooding the diesel out in the med and having to pull back into Lamod.

Kissing Sparks on the Dance floor on the rock, the tender sailors rioting and wanting to kill the bubblehead fags, and
us having to be escorted by armed guards back to the barracks.

MMC wolf getting sh*t faced and somehow thinks his piss cutter is on the other side of the security fence. The only
reason they didn’t shoot him is that he fell off on our side, the CO had to personally pick him up from security.

Steve Mehrl almost killing Tony Davison when he dropped a deck hatch on his head while we were in deck div. Same
day Mehrl kicked over a 5 gallon bucket of primer over the side and making the Orion green….

Another sonartech blowing sanitaries to the Orion and blowing the hose off of the tender coating it with crap.

Booger in sonar calling away “torpedo in the water” while the drill brief was still in progress, we thought it was real.

Booger taking flash pictures of the ship’s control party while we were doing a periscope observation rigged for black,
we were blind!

Booger asking while me and sksn Covert were loading the tdu “seaman Covert, is the tdu muzzle
ball valve shut? I don’t want any flooding on my boat!”

Jim the Elt wearing mickey mouse ears all the time; I discovered that he was wearing them to hide the earrings during
the entire med run.

Herren, a mssa idiot sitting on CP Coons lap asking him why if he had a flat tire there was still air on top of it.

Herren, draining the deepfat fire while energized and starting a fire, so we dumped the range guard and made a hell
of a mess.

Steve Bria walking into the messdecks with Herren’s girlfriends picture in a framed necklace, dangling from his penis,
and Herren laughing/gigglin…..

Clay Dodson as aef, dangling and slapping Herren sitting on the ladder up to the messdecks with his penis, asking
him “does the white boy want some?” and Herren giggling.

We put a lubricated blown up condom in Herren’s bunk bag, it laid there for 2 weeks cause he didn’t know what it
was….

Being triced up in the torpedo room during field day and Booger asking me why I didn’t have a chemwipe in my hands.

Starting up the fuel oil purifier and the torpedomen calling away a hotrun in the torpedo room.

Covert hanging from the overhead in the torpedo room from his harness and trying to explain why he was late for
maneuvering watch.

The duty section in port watching through the holes around the TV in the messdecks as another cook screwed his
wife in the starboard stores room, and didn’t know….

Having Engo re-connect the air connection to the lead accumulator air flask after a inspection for oil, and
crossthreading 3 inches of threads on a 5 inch ms fitting….he had a come along attached to
the main motor to turn the ford wrench, destroyed the air flask….

Engo cutting in air (laziness) because the hydraulic plant was inerted with nitrogen (oil in the lead air flask) and
blowing the hydraulic plant up…

First day in port from the med run–a minor fire in the JO’s stateroom bunklight and a nav’et tripping and dumping a
pkp in the stateroom…

Squirrel trapping me in the crew’s head (first week onboard) and not letting me out till I looked at his overgrown left
ball….

Flooding in the engineroom in port (divers removing a blank flange off of the hull); we actually looked at the pod to
see if there was a drill scheduled…

The duty section couldn’t get to the casualty because all of the jo’s clogging the passageway in lower level..engo
beating them into the outboards with a material bag….hehe

Blowing the drain pump overboard flange off in port and staying up all night in a smallboat soaking up oil with
absorbants….

A shotgun stock being broke on the pier playing ebgreen ball….

2 drunks tying up to the rudder to fish, and wouldn’t leave.

The qm’s trash can breaking loose during a storm at pd and shearing a depth gauge line, calling away flooding in
control…

IC1 Angel, standing aow/aef/tmow, crawling through the messdecks with a bucket of puke sitting on his logs at pd, we
were doing 45’s port and starboard….

The hull valve leaking for air to the head valve, us placing fake fish in the trash bag for the leak, and us naming them.

Koval on the phones with Orv, trying to pump overboard with the trim pump by trying to turn it by hand and Orv saying
“KOVAL, you have to turn it faster!!!!!” Koval replying “i can’t, i can’t”, and starting to cry (on the helms/planes card
you had to operate the pump locally to get the sig.)

Koval waking up the supply officer on the Orion to walk through a chit for bulkhead remover, and the officer telling
him they were out of stock….

Koval routing a 1250 for water slugs to the CO, and him approving it….

Koval cleaning paint off of his arms using bulkhead remover, (until Harry Feather caught him); he was using a 1
pound can of lard!

Herren being dressed up for the mail buoy retrieval, getting ready to man stations, and Booger taking pictures of
him…ruining it….

Steve Bria, aka “nub control petty officer”, smashing oranges and grapefruit on the heads of nubs sitting on the
messdecks in the morning and not working on quals….

Dogpile the chop everytime he walked through the messdecks during a movie…

Waking Roach up by placing a cup of hot coffee on his chest while he was in his rack, he never relieved Orv ontime…

Engo being proud that his wife wore the same size jeans he did….you had to have seen him at the time!

Clay Dodson crossthreading the crew’s head deck drain plug, blowing sans, blowing the plug out and dumping san 3
into the head.

Ricky Donnel blowing sh_t on himself at least on a weekly basis…

The washing machine tearing loose from its mounts during a spin cycle and tearing the place up!

The forward flood control accumulator air drains blowing out during a duty section movie…

Emergency surfacing and the diesel not starting right away when we dumped a refrigeration plant in the engineroom.

I can go on, and on……hope these were entertaining!

Danny Hagar
rboot@rocketmail.com

Dinger Bell, AKA, Tinker Bell, AKA, David Bell. You guys are great! I’m remembering more and more. The more I
remember, the more I know why I forgot it.

What ever happened to “Mac the Slack” Mackensen ? My fondest memory of Mac was going down for sound trials
and torpedo testing on the infamous “southern run.” Here it was, state 10 seas and chow time. The meal for the
night, of course: chicken ala king (Dynamited chicken). I had to go to the Wardroom for some mundane crap. All the
officers were green and most were throwing chunks, except Mac. He had a piece of bread in one hand and a spoon
in the other, and he was taking no prisoners.

We got the boat fumigated for cockroaches…the first time with Wigley by importing them to the bow compartment in
35mm film canisters. Whenever we would leave the boat, we would dump a load of roaches. The stewards even
knew what was going on.

The shipyard was a blast even if it was 18 hour days, 7 days a week. We shot seagulls using welding rods and CO2
fire extinguishers. Got into a shit load of diver’s markers and tossed it into the water, then had the chief diver for the
yards want to know where his boys were. Prussian Blued toilet seats, Mcgan’s bicycle seat, and tossing WO2 Tidd’s
bicycle off the living barge. Super gluing Chief Danley’s coffee cup to his desk, with hot coffee in it. I met Chief
Danley in San Diego. I was on the Drum, he was on the sub tender. He told me somebody mailed him all his missing
pipes. They were, of course, in no shape to use.

I remember Rickover’s visit. Green picked him up at the airport and first off he bummed a quarter from Green for a c
ollect call. After the call, he put the quarter in his pocked and gave it a pat. His pocket was full of change. He
got to the living barge and the A-gang Chief was supposed to have a “good” set of khaki’s for him because he was
the only one on the boat that was the Admiral’s size. For some reason the khaki’s didn’t work out. So the Admiral
borrowed a set from the duty officer, who was 6′ 2″. This guy looked like a bum when he came down to the engine
room. Shirt sleeves and pants legs rolled up, what a sight. He was better mannered for lunch. Not having any pitless
grapes for the Admiral, he spit the seeds at Wigley. I only got that info second hand from the steward who had to
clean up the mess. Ho Ho Ho, got to go.

Dave Bell
dbell10@earthlink.net

Damn, I love reading your sea stories, but it sounds like you guys had more fun aboard the Terrible T than I did.

Maybe it was because of The Cuban Missle Crisis or the Bay Of Pigs or Vietnam or the Kennedy Assasination or
that the Thresher went down or the first wave of anti-war protesters — our civilian peers and friends — who
questioned the values of young men thrilled to be assigned to one of America’s first nuclear subs….but from your
stories it sounds like perhaps we took it more seriously. Who knows? We did have some fun, however, and
enough memories to last a lifetime.

I was an 18 year old Seaman’s Apprentice (two white stripes?) when I reported aboard the Tullibee fresh out of
Sub School. I think only like 3-6 of the guys in my class were assigned to nukes. Not many. Most were assigned
to conventional subs like the Cavalla, which we studied in Sub School. There were newer diesel boats too, like the
Hardhead even the Albacore, which looked like a nuke but ran on diesel power if i remember correctly.

When we were at sea it always seemed (at least to me) that we could end up in the middle of a war. As I read your
sea stories, I was wondering if it was that way for you guys too….

Perhaps because of my perspective, and my age (or should I say youth) back then, my most vivid memories were
kind of serious situations…

This one I will never forget.

I was onboard the Tullibee for what I believe was known back then as ‘the second run to San Juan’. The
Commissioning Crew had taken the first one a few months earlier, and apparently it was a real blast and
expectations were high that this trip would be more of the same.

I think we were originally scheduled to cruise to San Juan in a week or so. We left New London on a Monday and
were supposed to get down there for the weekend for a week in port. On Thursday, however, sonar picked up
what was identified as a Russian Submarine. We were very close to American soil and this was viewed as a
serious situation. To make a long story short, we
played tag with that guy for a full week. I stood watches during the week in Sonar (I heard the sob), at the
analogue Mk. 112 FC Computer (I was a Fire Control Technician), and on the planes (I was also the Battle
Planesman at that time).

About a week into this very quiet (and seemingly deadly) game of cat & mouse, right after I was relieved from my
watch on the planes, I walked toward the bow compartment to work on my quals. On my way out of the Control
Room I glanced over at the Fire Control computer and noticed that the two ships were only 1800 yards apart and
closing…kinda close, but we had been playing tag with these guys for a week already. This was a very modern
computer for it’s time, but very, very, very old by digital standards. It was a servo mechanism that worked on a
combination of gears and electricity. It had pictures and counters, not digital readouts.

What you saw, literally, was two drawings that were the shape of ships, with their bows pointing directly toward one
another and the range counter clicking down, showing that the range from the Russian sub was only 1800 yards. I
noted the closeness to the new watch on the computer and walked forward to work on quals. Hey, I did eventually
earn my Dolphins on the Tullibee…..

Anyway, I went all the way up to the closet right below the forward hatch, right before the officers mess. I was
looking for some valves. I thought they would be right inside that closet to the right of the hatch if you were facing
forward. I turned the doorknob…and as I opened that door the sound of the flodding and collision alarm started
howling. I immediately slammed the door closed. Oh shit. Somehow by opening this dumb door I had started a
flood — that was my immediate thought. I think the damn horn for that alarm was right inside the door and it made
me jump about a foot off the ground.

It took about a second or two for me to realize that was not the case….that this was a real flodding and collision
alarm and odds were that we were about to be in a collision with the Russian sub. I took off like a bolt toward the
Control Room, which was both my station for Flooding & Collision and my Battle Station. Immediately after I jumped
through the hatch, it was slammed shut and the compartments were sealed. The ship started to vibrate heavily as
the Captain ordered the engines turned up and the planes to full rise. All tanks were blown and all hell broke lose.
As I passed the computer I glanced over and saw that the two ships which had been facing toward each other were
now spinning wildly around and facing away from each other. What I was witnessing were two ships that appeared
to pass each over each other — which meant a near miss or a collision with “the enemy” was imminent.

Now you have to understand, we had been running silent for a full week. No noises, no movies, no 1mc, no
nothing. Quiet running, full alert, very quiet stuff. Now from nowhere the ship was shaking up a storm, cavitating
like crazy with a burst of accelleration from maybe 1/3 speed to full or flank.

My first job in this situation was to crawl behind the computer and toss out the damage conrol equipment, and
because I was so well trained by the Navy that’s exactly what I did. The shaking got even worse and the ship took
a tremendous up angle…at least 45 degrees is what I remember but it could have been more or less. It was way
up and shaking like nothing I ever expected to encounter in my life.

I kept tossing the bags out and suddenly it occurred to me that nobody was taking them. I looked from behind that
big old computer and what I saw was the entire Damage Control Crew hanging on for dear life to anything solid that
was nearby. I looked back toward the dining hall and saw a few guys, including one particularly salty and tough
sailor, holding themselves up by spreading their arms between the bulkheads of Sonar and Radio. There I was tossing out bags and these very brave guys who I looked up to were just holding on, frozen. Did they know something I didn’t know??? Hey, maybe
I should hold on if these guys are. The up angle kept increasing….. right up until we broke the surface with a loud
slam!!!

And that was it. We never did see that Russian sub. Nope. But lemme tell you, we made enough noise to wake
the dead coming up. Rumor had it that we either had a near miss or that the Old Man got tired of the game and
pulled the plug by surfacing. Never did hear the real story about what happened. Not sure who did but it certainly
wasn’t the crew. And I will never ever forget the look of horror on my shipmate’s faces as the Tullibee shuddered
and broached the surface that day.

Anyway, by the time things settled down we were on the surface and there were no sonar contacts to be heard
anywhere. The Russians, if they really were Russians, were probably halfway back to the Baltic Sea or wherever it
was that they docked.

So we cruised on to San Juan…about a week behind schedule. What was supposed to be a week in an exotic
location turned out to be a weekend in port with one day of Liberty and one day of work, so we could get back out
to sea and back to New London on time.

And I will never forget that day of Liberty in San Juan. But that’s another story for another time. Hope you guys
enjoyed this one.
Maybe more to follow….

Mel Ciociola
lemstak@aol.com

Damn, I loved reading your sea stories, but it sounds like you guys had more fun aboard the Terrible T than I did.

Maybe it was because of The Cuban Missle Crisis or the Bay Of Pigs or Vietnam or the Kennedy Assasination or
that the Thresher went down or the first wave of anti-war protesters — our civilian peers and friends — who
questioned the values of young men thrilled to be assigned to one of America’s first nuclear subs….but from your
stories it sounds like perhaps we took it more seriously. Who knows? We did have some fun, however, and
enough memories to last a lifetime.

I was an 18 year old Seaman’s Apprentice (two white stripes?) when I reported aboard the Tullibee fresh out of
Sub School. I think only like 3-6 of the guys in my class were assigned to nukes. Not many. Most were assigned
to conventional subs like the Cavalla, which we studied in Sub School. There were newer diesel boats too, like the
Hardhead even the Albacore, which looked like a nuke but ran on diesel power if i remember correctly.

When we were at sea it always seemed (at least to me) that we could end up in the middle of a war. As I read your
sea stories, I was wondering if it was that way for you guys too….

Perhaps because of my perspective, and my age (or should I say youth) back then, my most vivid memories were
kind of serious situations…

This one I will never forget.

I was onboard the Tullibee for what I believe was known back then as ‘the second run to San Juan’. The
Commissioning Crew had taken the first one a few months earlier, and apparently it was a real blast and
expectations were high that this trip would be more of the same.

I think we were originally scheduled to cruise to San Juan in a week or so. We left New London on a Monday and
were supposed to get down there for the weekend for a week in port. On Thursday, however, sonar picked up
what was identified as a Russian Submarine. We were very close to American soil and this was viewed as a
serious situation. To make a long story short, we
played tag with that guy for a full week. I stood watches during the week in Sonar (I heard the sob), at the
analogue Mk. 112 FC Computer (I was a Fire Control Technician), and on the planes (I was also the Battle
Planesman at that time).

About a week into this very quiet (and seemingly deadly) game of cat & mouse, right after I was relieved from my
watch on the planes, I walked toward the bow compartment to work on my quals. On my way out of the Control
Room I glanced over at the Fire Control computer and noticed that the two ships were only 1800 yards apart and
closing…kinda close, but we had been playing tag with these guys for a week already. This was a very modern
computer for it’s time, but very, very, very old by digital standards. It was a servo mechanism that worked on a
combination of gears and electricity. It had pictures and counters, not digital readouts.

What you saw, literally, was two drawings that were the shape of ships, with their bows pointing directly toward one
another and the range counter clicking down, showing that the range from the Russian sub was only 1800 yards. I
noted the closeness to the new watch on the computer and walked forward to work on quals. Hey, I did eventually
earn my Dolphins on the Tullibee…..

Anyway, I went all the way up to the closet right below the forward hatch, right before the officers mess. I was
looking for some valves. I thought they would be right inside that closet to the right of the hatch if you were facing
forward. I turned the doorknob…and as I opened that door the sound of the flodding and collision alarm started
howling. I immediately slammed the door closed. Oh shit. Somehow by opening this dumb door I had started a
flood — that was my immediate thought. I think the damn horn for that alarm was right inside the door and it made
me jump about a foot off the ground.

It took about a second or two for me to realize that was not the case….that this was a real flodding and collision
alarm and odds were that we were about to be in a collision with the Russian sub. I took off like a bolt toward the
Control Room, which was both my station for Flooding & Collision and my Battle Station. Immediately after I jumped
through the hatch, it was slammed shut and the compartments were sealed. The ship started to vibrate heavily as
the Captain ordered the engines turned up and the planes to full rise. All tanks were blown and all hell broke lose.
As I passed the computer I glanced over and saw that the two ships which had been facing toward each other were
now spinning wildly around and facing away from each other. What I was witnessing were two ships that appeared
to pass each over each other — which meant a near miss or a collision with “the enemy” was imminent.

Now you have to understand, we had been running silent for a full week. No noises, no movies, no 1mc, no
nothing. Quiet running, full alert, very quiet stuff. Now from nowhere the ship was shaking up a storm, cavitating
like crazy with a burst of accelleration from maybe 1/3 speed to full or flank.

My first job in this situation was to crawl behind the computer and toss out the damage conrol equipment, and
because I was so well trained by the Navy that’s exactly what I did. The shaking got even worse and the ship took
a tremendous up angle…at least 45 degrees is what I remember but it could have been more or less. It was way
up and shaking like nothing I ever expected to encounter in my life.

I kept tossing the bags out and suddenly it occured to me that nobody was taking them. I looked from behind that
big old computer and what I saw was the entire Damage Control Crew hanging on for dear life to anything solid that
was nearby. I looked back toward the dining hall and saw a few guys, including one particularly salty and tough
sailor, holding themselves up by
spreading their arms between the bulkheads of Sonar and Radio. There I was tossing out bags and these very
brave guys who I looked up to were just holding on, frozen. Did they know something I didn’t know??? Hey, maybe
I should hold on if these guys are. The up angle kept increasing….. right up until we broke the surface with a loud
slam!!!

And that was it. We never did see that Russian sub. Nope. But lemme tell you, we made enough noise to wake
the dead coming up. Rumor had it that we either had a near miss or that the Old Man got tired of the game and
pulled the plug by surfacing. Never did hear the real story about what happened. Not sure who did but it certainly
wasn’t the crew. And I will never ever forget the look of horror on my shipmate’s faces as the Tullibee shuddered
and broached the surface that day.

Anyway, by the time things settled down we were on the surface and there were no sonar contacts to be heard
anywhere. The Russians, if they really were Russians, were probably halfway back to the Baltic Sea or wherever it
was that they docked.

So we cruised on to San Juan…about a week behind schedule. What was supposed to be a week in an exotic
location turned out to be a weekend in port with one day of Liberty and one day of work, so we could get back out
to sea and back to New London on time.

And I will never forget that day of Liberty in San Juan. But that’s another story for another time. Hope you guys
enjoyed this one.
Maybe more to follow….

Mel Ciociola
lemstak@aol.com

P.S. Does anyone else remember this? Is there anyone else as old as I am who reads this?

I have told so many stories, and made so many people laugh over the years (especially now when I tell them to my
Army buddies) that I forget which were true and which were lies. Here’s a few from 74-76. Let’s see if we all
remember this, or if I was dreaming the whole time.

– Jughead and Doc having eating contests. Jug eating 27 pieces of liver and 10 steaks. Doc eating 15 lobster tails
and two loaves of bread. Just to say they did it.

– Alice (I forget his last name) pulling a toaster out of a small bulkhead compartment in the crew’s mess to make a
piece of toast. The same instant he plugged it in, the reactor scrammed (Med 75). When the emergency lighting
came on, Alice was looking at the plug and mumbling “All I wanted was some G** D****** Toast!”

– Our Talent Shows. A reading from the “Book of Phillips” and Arm Pit dressed like a girl. He was hot.

– Estes, the perennial “Leading Seaman”, singing “The Wanderer” by Sha Na Na at the top of his lungs while
standing Helms/Planes.

– Estes taught me this one too: Steer course 180, but, really, cock the wheel a little bit and do a complete circle
without anyone noticing. Screws the Quartermaster all up.

– Our vast collection of Reel-to-Reel tapes, including the infamous XXX country music tapes with “Fireball” and
“Give me Forty Acres and I’ll Turn This Rig Around”. We always had music going, like a soundtrack to insanity.

– Our teenie-tiny library in the crew’s mess filled with Mac Bolen “Executioner” novels and Zane Grey westerns.

– Barry Kult flying into the wardroom everytime Folta whipped out a cigarette, just to light it for him.

– Birthday parties on the beach at La Mad with cases of nasty Peroni Beer (Birra). Shoving birthday cake up
someone’s ass.

– Ensign Habermeyer getting a hickie from Green Jeans right before he left to get married. Then he cried.

– Standing in the bridge on Northern runs and riding the swells like an amusement park ride. Laughing our butts off
as we watched water swirl down the conning tower hatch like a toilet bowl.

– Trying to wake Rudy Bagos up: Stand back three feet, touch his shoulder, then run.

– PN2 Frog getting his hair cut after almost a year of tucking it under his hat.

– Fighting British sailors in La Spezia

– Dave Dvorak getting his arm broke in a bar fight in Groton. Us going back with .45’s to kill someone. Luckily, they
left.

– The “Short – Timers” Chain.

– Snorting string.

– Crawling down into the aux tank outside of the SINS (?) room to load GDU weights and cans of coffee.

– Fires. Lots of fires. Occasional flooding. Occasional radiation alarms, collision alarms. Wow. The memories.

– “Mopping” the floor (deck) with a green scrubbie and a coffee can. Sweeping the floor (deck) with a foxtail and
dustpan. Hey, I was E-2, E-3. We had to do those things.

– Being a “Non-Qual Puke.”

– Worse yet, being a Non-Qual Puke Ensign, like Habermeyer.

– Our Tullibee lighters and belt buckles. Sure wish I hadn’t lost mine.

– Jim Ash, God rest his soul.

I miss all you guys. I’m in the Army now. I’m a paratrooper, Air Assault trooper, jungle expert, Forward Observer.
Been in for 13 years. Still, though, it’s a lot less risky than a Med Run on the old T2!!

SFC David Dunckel
Fort Knox, KY
SlamdunkE7@Artillery.com
david.dunckel@usarec.army.mil

I’d love to hear from you!! Drop me a line.

Too many things to remember, never will forget. Thanks to Mike (Willing) for putting me back in touch with the T2.
Was victim of the Monday morning massacre, ended up in a SeaBee battalion. Don’t know who was more
traumatized, me or the CBs. Made ET1 before I got out in ’79, been in nuc power ever since. Now at STP, far from
Virginia and Groton. Hope to hear from some of you guys. Miss you all a lot. Shake.

Randy “Shake N Bake” Nicely
ET2(SS)
January, 1976 to March 1978
shakenbake1976@yahoo.com