Silent Service TV show

[britbike1]

Used to watch all those shows with my dad who was on subs in WW2 in the Pacific. He made 3 patrols, 1 on the Hake and 2 on the Lapon SS260. By the way we lost 53 subs with an average of 70 men per boat. The only time he got seasick was taking a DE from Gitmo to Norfolk when they ran into a storm with 25ft seas. The chief quarters was in the bow behind the chain locker. On the map you can see there were a couple places with depth charges dropped on them, one 88 the other 89. Went on a similar sub to his in Mantiwoc, Wisc, a Gato class. Very cramped!!! Forget the movies with 8 guys around the periscope! Funny but 22 years later I sailed the same waters on a carrier CVA 14 for 18 months during Nam. '65-'67. Hope you like the pictures. Total respect for those guys on subs, they went, they did it they could do it again. My dad is the chief in the middle behind the range finder.

 

[les.b]

Used to watch all those shows with my dad who was on subs in WW2 in the Pacific. He made 3 patrols, 1 on the Hake and 2 on the Lapon SS260. By the way we lost 53 subs with an average of 70 men per boat. The only time he got seasick was taking a DE from Gitmo to Norfolk when they ran into a storm with 25ft seas. The chief quarters was in the bow behind the chain locker. On the map you can see there were a couple places with depth charges dropped on them, one 88 the other 89. Went on a similar sub to his in Mantiwoc, Wisc, a Gato class. Very cramped!!! Forget the movies with 8 guys around the periscope! Funny but 22 years later I sailed the same waters on a carrier CVA 14 for 18 months during Nam. '65-'67. Hope you like the pictures. Total respect for those guys on subs, they went, they did it they could do it again. My dad is the chief in the middle behind the range finder.

Wow, Britbike1:

Looks like your dad and my uncle Gene were in the same "neck of the woods", as we say here in West Virginia. If you read the few pages I have posted in post 17 above, Gene was in Manila Bay on Dec 8th 1941 (our Dec 7th) when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. I have not posted any more, but I have several years preceding that date, and quite a bit afterwards, until he left his log here in the States while on leave before retuning to the Scamp and never returning home again.

My best regards to both you and your father, and thanks for your service. I was probably in about the same time that you were, and the two destroyers that I served on we're both built during WWII, so I'm not sure how much more comfortable I had it compared to what it was like back then, but the communication and navigation were much better.

Best Regards, Les

 

[snake803]

My dad was in the Navy from 43-45. He was on LCI's but knew a Chief who had been a Navy diver that helped with the USS Squalus rescue off of the east coast in the 30's. He had some stories to tell.

We have a church cemetery here in Lexington County, SC that holds the remains of a member of the "Squalus".. I took a couple of photos yesterday..
JIM...............

 

[snake803]

I had an Uncle in the Navy from WWI through WWII. He was a hard-hat salvage diver, and had a lot of experiences all over the world, including a tour in China during the Japanese invasion. He married a Chinese woman there, or so we were told, who died shortly afterward. Nobody in the family knew very much about his Naval service, and he left no records or letters anyone is aware of. But I do have one picture of him in uniform (sort of) that looks like it was taken during the 1930s based on the cars in the background. Family legend (with some substantiation from an old newspaper clipping) was he was one of the divers who worked on the rescue and recovery of the Squalus in 1939. That's my only tentative connection to the Silent Service.

See post #43
JIM...............