When we decommed her sister, it felt like the Navy and DOD were going to send us all thank you notes for putting her out of her (thier?) misery.
Make no mistake, the Barbel class (and the Darter) were
old by 1989. Aside from some upgrades to sonar and fire control, the class hadn't been touched since they converted from bow planes to fairwaters in (I think?) 1965.
Adding new gizmos to a nuke is fairly easy. They produce and generate more than enough power. On a diesel boat, something's gotta give which usually means getting used to cold water and living with a flashlight tied to your hand.
There's also that matter of "they ain't nukes..". My new crew members (well, most of them) seemed to like the idea that I could also wear DBF dolphins but it was a bit of a shock when I checked on board the Bremerton and my new COB hands me a full ship's qual card.
Normally, re-quals (going from one class to another) were more of an admin/CYA thing where you sit down with your duty chief on a duty day. For me, it was expected that I wouldn't mind being a non-qual again.
Lucky for me, a lot of the chiefs in the goat locker were on my side.
