[JSLTIGER]

Originally Posted by geetrue

Me ... I volunteered to be ships swimmer in the summer of 64 on the USS Salmon SS-573 http://www.usssalmon.org/

I thought, hey if someone falls overboard I'm a pretty good swimmer, I can help them, right? Not exactly what the COB had in mind.

I found out the hard way that the job of a ships swimmer was to row out to the practice torpedo's after we fired them. Then tie a line in the nose for purposes of retrieving said torpedo and saving the US Navy a lot of money in not having to send out a special boat to do this for us.

The COB explained the job to me, a young 19 year old naive seaman, after we fired a practice torpedo off the coast of California somewhere near San Clemente Island.

We surface and the topside torpedo retrevival party reports topside. The boat held the record at 15 minutes from time of surfacing till the time the fish was back onboard.

I managed to break the record for the longest time it ever took on that beauitful summer day in the Pacific Ocean. I got into the little yellow rubber raft with a line tied to the raft and a line tied around my waist and I rowed my little raft to the practice torpedo rising and falling like a bouy with the wrll marked pointy end up.

I get to the fish in about ten minutes, but the darn thing won't stand still ... it goes up and me in my little raft go down. Everyone is yelling at me on the deck ... the captain is yelling at me from the bridge ... the scene starts to get comical.

I get the line through the bull nose and wham the boat goes down and the line slips out, everyone is yelling, so I left the saftey of the little raft and grab the fish by the nose and hog tie it like a calf roper.

Fall back into the water, grab the raft and by that time they are hauling the fish back in. I didn't have enough strength to row back to the boat, so they had to pull me back razing me of course on the way.

You learn in a hurry what volunteer means when it doesn't work out the way you thought it would ... I was very careful the rest of my time in the service not to willingly volunteer for anything again.

I've never been in the service, nor was I even close to being alive in '64, but if there's one thing I've discovered in my study of the military: The first rule of the armed forces is never volunteer yourself.