|
|
US Navy Submarine Warfare School
A $3 million makeover of its new officer training
classrooms will give the Naval Submarine School the latest in
instructional technology, but a new assessment is designed to make sure
that it’s using that technology to the maximum effect.
Captain Arnold O. Lotring, commander of submarine school, said he wanted
to make sure that as the school opens 10 electronic classrooms in
Bledsoe Hall later this year, it doesn’t just use the same old teaching
techniques that have been used at the old site, Cromwell Hall, which
opened with its old-style classrooms in 1957. "I wanted to take a fresh
look to make sure that we are maximizing our opportunities," Lotring
said. "My major concern is that we build it with enough robustness to go
into the future."
Sonalysts Inc. has been hired to assess the training methods the school
uses now and suggest improvements for the new classrooms. Sonalysts’
representative, retired Navy Captain G. Michael Hewitt, said for many
years schools that implemented computer based training simply "took what
they were doing before and put it in a box."
"Now, it’s really gone beyond that," Hewitt said. Computerized training
allows for individual, tailored instruction beyond what is possible in
the traditional, teacher-student relationship. It allows students to
access a wide variety of reference materials from their desktop to help
them solve problems. It allows World Wide Web-based instruction to reach
a wider audience, both in numbers and geographically, than any teacher
ever could before.
SWO Nuclear Power Training
Some SWOs choose to take on additional responsibility and train to be
nuclear engineers on aircraft carriers. During their senior year of
college, candidates for Surface Warfare Nuclear Propulsion Training must
first go to Washington, D.C. and be personally interviewed by Admiral
Bowman, the Director of the Naval Nuclear Propulsion. If accepted into
the program, they will follow a similar path to all other SWO's, except
that their second sea tour will be a 24 month division officer tour
aboard a nuclear powered aircraft carrier. During the first tour aboard
a conventional surface ship, they earn their Surface Warfare
Qualification. After the initial sea tour, they attend the six month
Naval Nuclear Power School in Charleston, SC. Nuclear Power School is an
academic environment where students are instructed in math, physics,
chemistry and theory of reactor plant design and operation. After
Nuclear Power School, they receive hands-on experience for six months at
the controls of an actual nuclear reactor at one of the two Nuclear
Power Training Units (also known as Prototypes). Upon completion of
Prototype, they go on to the 24 month division officer's tour in the
engineering plant of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.
Assignments
SWOs do shore tours, usually lasting no more than two years, in-between
their sea tours. For example, after your division officer tours you
might have a staff job at the Pentagon or a Navy command, or serve as an
instructor at SWOS, the Naval Academy, or a NROTC unit. If you perform
well in your shore tours, you can expect to be promoted in your
following sea tours and command a ship's department. In other words, you
will command all of the divisions that fall under a particular category,
such as engineering, combat systems, or operations. This tour lasts
thirty-six months. Later, after another shore tour on a command's staff
or at a military postgraduate school, you will serve as a ship's
Executive Officer for three years. After the following shore tour and
corresponding performance-based promotion, you will achieve the goal of
all career SWOs: captain of your own ship!
Commitment
Your initial commitment after graduation from NROTC as a SWO is four
years. Nuclear SWOs, due to their extra training requirements, incur a
five year commitment after commissioning or a 24 month CVN tour,
whichever is longer. Acceptance of promotion to lieutenant commander or
above incurs an additional service obligation for every promotion
accepted.
Re
 Blind
Man's Bluff
Little is known--and less has been published--about American submarine
espionage during the Cold War. These submerged sentinels silently
monitored the Soviet Union's harbors, shadowed its subs, watched its
missile tests, eavesdropped on its conversations, and even retrieved
top-secret debris from the bottom of the sea. In an engaging mix of
first-rate journalism and historical narrative, Sherry Sontag,
Christopher Drew, and Annette Lawrence Drew describe what went on.
"Most of the stories in Blind Man's Bluff have never been told
publicly," they write, "and none have ever been told in this level of
detail." Among their revelations is the most complete accounting to date
of the 1968 disappearance of the U.S.S. Scorpion; the story of how the
Navy located a live hydrogen bomb lost by the Air Force; and a plot by
the CIA and Howard Hughes to steal a Soviet sub. The most interesting
chapter reveals how an American sub secretly tapped Soviet
communications cables beneath the waves. Blind Man's Bluff is a
compelling book about the courage, ingenuity, and patriotism of
America's underwater spies.
35 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
A great read for anyone into submarines or espionage, May 1, 2000
Reviewer: Mark Hills "Nobody gets me, I'm the wind, baby!" (Minneapolis,
MN United States) - See all my reviews
Imagine if you will that you are onboard a US Navy submarine that has
just snuck into Soviet territorial waters to spy on what the other
side's navy is doing. From the sonar members of the crew can listen to
the screw noise and learn turn counts that identify different Soviet
Naval ships and submarines that are plying the seas around you. Your
submarine-in this case the USS-Tautog (SSN-639) is here to gather
intelligence on Soviet cruise missile submarines that could pose a
threat to US carriers. Your captain, in this case Commander Buele G.
Balderston drove his sub deeper into Petropavlovsk whereupon they
collided with a Soviet Echo-II class attack boat. This was 1970, the
half way point in the Cold War, one of three accidents that year, and
all of them chronicled in Sherry Sontag, Christopher Drew and Annette
Lawrence-Drew's 'Blind Man's Bluff-The Untold Story of American
Submarine Espionage'.
While the title may sound like some cheesy hack banged the book out and
filled it with questionable information, 'Blind Man's Bluff' takes the
moderate approach, the authors admitting that sometimes the information
is sketchy at times, and speculate on what probably happened,
corroborating information from those directly involved aids in fleshing
out the true stories told within the book. It details the disastrous
first attempt to spy on the Soviets in 1949 when disaster struck the
ill-fated USS-Cochino when one of it's batteries exploded, leaving the
submarine to flounder in sixteen foot swells before eventually sinking
off the coast of Norway. It's crew was rescued by her sister ship, the
USS-Tusk, but not before six crewmen were killed-drowned in the stormy
seas.
The book also talks at some length about Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, the
man who single-handedly created a nuclear navy for the United States. It
details Rickover as being a power hungry, arrogant and petty man who
made or broke careers as he saw fit, and someone who demanded to know
about any projects 'his' boats were involved with. Evidence, whether it
be technical or personal, is often presented in anecdotal form, often
amusing and always enlightening. It praises the Navy as often as it
chastises it and allows the reader to develop their own opinions on
whether an action was right or wrong.
However, with regards to the 1968 sinking of the USS-Scorpion, it
attacks the establishment-the Navy and her departments for a cover-up
that has gone on for thirty-two years. When the Scorpion went down, she
was in such a sorry state of repair, that one crewmen had been removed
over fears expressed in letters written to his superiors. However, it
wasn't the fact that Scorpion seemed to be falling apart that caused her
to sink, rather a defective torpedo battery leaking within a torpedo and
cooked off the 350 lb HBX warhead contained within the weapon that
caused her to go down. Memos written from the Naval Undersea Warfare
Engineering Center told of the defective batteries, but were ignored. At
first the Navy announced she may have been sunk by the Soviets, then
recounted that in order to deny the torpedo theory-stating steadfastly
that there was no way a weapon could 'cook off' while inside a
submarine.
As well the authors attack, and rightfully so, the CIA for their $500
million boondoggle of the American public for the Glomar Explorer
fiasco-code named Project: Jennifer, the Glomar Explorer was the CIA's
massive ship that was used to hoist an antiquated Soviet Golf-class
diesel electric missile submarine out of sixteen-thousand feet of water
1,700 miles north-west of Hawaii. The submarine had sunk, probably due
to the same problem that sank the Cochino-an exploding battery. Suffice
it to say that Glomar Explorer utterly failed to raise the sub more than
3000 feet, at which point the grapples failed and the Golf fell almost a
mile where it shattered to bits on the ocean floor. This didn't stop the
CIA from trying again a year later in 1975, and succeeded in raising
only 20% of the sub-minus the three nuclear missiles it carried, minus
any code books and minus any usable technology. It was this singular
event that led to the CIA being scrutinized and stripped of much of its
vaunted power.
From submarine delivered wire tapping pods being delivered into Soviet
waters to listen in on undersea telephone cables to Snorkel Patty and
her collection of hundreds of dolphin pins, 'Blind Man's Bluff' delivers
humor, excitement, and an easily readable glimpse into the shadowy and
very often murky depths of Navy Intelligence, its operations and its
people. The book is personable and detailed, fulfilling its criteria of
being both informative and entertaining making it a fine addition to
anyone's library who is interested in submarines, the US Navy or
espionage in general.
 Dark
Waters
A former crewmember and a journalist join forces to tell the absorbing
tale of the deepest secret weapon in the U.S. Navy’s submarine force,
the deep-diving nuclear submarine NR-1. A brainchild of the brilliant
and controlling Admiral Rickover, even her construction involved a host
of technical problems. When she finally went to sea in 1970, her crew of
12 (including the senior author) found her slow, almost unnavigable on
the surface, and facing previously unsuspected threats, such as undersea
tsunamis when she operated at her designed depth of 3,000 feet. They and
their successors helped place underwater sonar devices, retrieve lost
F-14’s with secret Phoenix missiles aboard, and perform many other
missions that are only hinted at in the book. They had to survive bad
food, accommodations that were anything but ergonomic, a reactor that
worked most (but not all) of the time and the persistent curiosity of
the Soviet Bloc. The Soviet Bloc is gone, of course, and likewise
Admiral Rickover, but the NR-1 sails on, the U. S. Navy’s oldest
operational submarine. Her career was not declassified in time for Blind
Man’s Bluff, but fans of the earlier book will devour this one with
enthusiasm.
As the Cold War has receded into history, we are
learning more about the incredible feats of technology and human
achievement that went on in that period. Joining the ranks of books
(e.g., Sontag & Drew's "Blind Man's Bluff", Craven's "Silent War" and
Tyler's "Running Critical") that deal with the role of the US Naval
submarine force is "Dark Waters" by Vyborny & Davis. This book combines
the story of the development and exploits of the NR-1 with the story of
Vyborny's service aboard this submarine. As one of the "plank owners",
Vyborny takes us through the long gestation period and the immense
technical challenges of building a small, nuclear powered submarine
capable of diving far deeper than its' larger sister SSNs. The unique
abilities of this submarine to literally drive (on Goodyear truck
tires!) along the ocean floor, and the varied uses it is put to during
the time period described are fascinating. Vyborny's description of a
"routine" short voyage by NR-1 out of Groton that turns into a
seafarer's nightmare is vivid and chilling. Along the way we also get
further insight into the driving force behind NR-1's development, one of
the most fascinating and controversial characters in modern US Naval
history, Adm. Rickover. The NR-1 is truly a national resource, and it is
a delight to finally have an authoritative insight into the role it has
played over the past thirty plus years. Although the book states on its'
final page that the NR-1 has become the oldest operational boat in the
Navy, I believe the correct statement is that it is the oldest
operational submarine in the US Navy (carriers such as CVN 65,
Enterprise, predate the NR-1)
I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in
either submarine history and operations or the Cold War in general. My
only reservation is that I wish the book were longer and had even more
fascinating stories about this unique submarine and its' crew! |
