In The Navy (FT “C” School), Part 1

Mk 113 School (or “C” School) lasted 15 weeks and Dyke and I were still together and pretty much inseparable. It started right on the heels of “A” school. We learned all of the peripheral equipment and how the weapons system really works on a submarine. We learned enough about the central UYK-7 Computer to be dangerous (reboot it).

If you remember, back when I first arrived in Groton, I was in a pretty much abandoned barracks. I found out why, shortly after “C” School started. They were demolishing two of the old barracks to make way for a brand new larger one. The dynamite blasting shook this whole part of the base, because the whole place sits on a huge granite slab. The blasting wasn’t real deep, but they obviously wanted a flat plain for the new building.

The blasting seemed to take a long time, but once the frame of the building went up, things moved really fast. It wound up being exactly the same design they used in the newer buildings back in Great Lakes. Red brick abounds.

We were now in the Regan Presidency years and over time we started receiving more and more protesters at the base’s main gate. They would line up along the fence adjacent to the base’s baseball fields, that leads to the gate. They had large posters of mostly carnage from the US nuclear attacks on Japan near the end of WW2. We would roll down the windows in the car as we passed the protesters and yell “How much for the picture!?”, or “I love that one, can I hang it in my living room?” Of course the protesters yelled back at us, calling us “war mongers”. It was cruel, but they were tremendously annoying and there at the base entrance always. The fact is, not a single US Submarine fired on a live target in my years in the Navy (that I know of) which was 1981 to 1987. This was the height of the Cold War though, and tensions were always very high.

Of course I had no idea about what was happening out in the submarine fleet while I was in school or before then. If you are at all interested in the subject of the Cold War and the part Submarines played in it, please to be reading “At The Abyss” by Thomas Reed. It is an excellent reference book, not a novel. Riveting and factual though.

In hind sight, I do now see the nuclear attacks on Japan as a bad thing, but at the time I understand their reasoning. I hope we are in a better world now, but I fear that’s a pipe dream.