Last night I finished re-reading the story, Making of a Submarine Officer. The story of the USS San Francisco (SSN 711) by Alex Fleming, who served on her for about two years.

Knowing what happened to her at the end of the book, I really paid attention to the detail of how bad a shape she was in and how the crew had to fight every day against all the material defects in 711 to get her ready for sea. All the inspectors that came aboard at almost, so it seems, to fail her for something so small, I wouldn’t think it would make a difference. One extreme example was, a leaking oil sight glass. It was leaking 3 drops a minute. Being a non nuke, and an engineman, 3 drops a minute of any leaking substance was, “set the maneuvering watch”, good to go. So, I was trying to rap my head around these, what was to me inconsequential troubles. But I realize we are talking about apples and oranges. Many of the problems they were experiencing was on equipment I had no idea what it was and what it did, so much of what I thought about anything, was based on nothing, other then, a feeling of sorrow for what the crew was going through, whether officers or enlisted.

How the author, Fleming had problems “Rigging for Dive” in almost every compartment he was assigned to. How over worked all these men were trying to open a new home port in Guam, because the Navy Brass thought it would be beneficial to the Navy. However, they didn’t realize how bad a shape the 711 was in. How they Navy gets screwed by the shipyards who does overhauls on our subs, to the point that they installed a screw on 711 that was not designed for a 688 boat, which was one of their sources of noise while she was running at sea. I missed that item in my first reading of this book.

In spite of all they’re problems, this is a book about the crew. How they persevered under conditions I am very glad I was never under. And how in almost unbelievable circumstances they persevered when they finally got a new skipper who believed they could accomplish what the Navy expected of them.

I’m glad I re-read this book. It gives me a better appreciation for what these fellow submariners went through in spite of the stupidity of the brass sitting in comfortable office’s put them through.

Before they went to 711 the CO, Kevin Mooney, the off going DOOW who hit the chicken switches, MMCS(SS) Danny Hager and a young QM, Dean (?) all used to post here.