Norwegian Ships (Neutral?) - Page 2

Sailor Steve · 05-06-13, 09:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BigWalleye

What is it with you guys? We are a thousand miles from salt water, but all the veterans who are native to this area went for the Navy! Doesn't matter which era - the Deuce, Vietnam, Gulf - everybody was a sailor.

Well, for me it was selfish. I had wanted as a kid to join the air force, but my eyes went bad, and if I couldn't fly fighters I didn't see the point. When I dropped out of college I was left with a choice - join the navy or get drafted into the army. I didn't see that as a choice at all, so the navy it was.

Sailing is a lot more fun than walking.

Kelly621 · 05-06-13, 10:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BigWalleye
What is it with you guys? We are a thousand miles from salt water, but all the veterans who are native to this area went for the Navy! Doesn't matter which era - the Deuce, Vietnam, Gulf - everybody was a sailor.

1968....I graduated from High School and got my draft lottery number....it was 5. I had two choices, go to college and get a IIS deferment or get drafted.
A friend of my fathers was the local Navy recruiter and a submariner

. A few sea stories later I was on my way out of the small mid-west town I was raised in and on my way to the Navy and volunteering for submarines. Ended up doing a full career with no regrets.

If you look at U-boat crews most of them also came from " thousand miles from salt water"

Kelly 621

As far as neutral shipping I like Steve's approach....it is not perfect, but neither is SH3.

CaptBones · 05-06-13, 11:30 AM

Well, I already knew what it was like to be soaking wet and knee-deep in mud or freezing cold and buried up to your arm-pits in snow and trying to get a bead on a target with guys everywhere yelling and screaming and throwing stuff at you...deer hunting season with a bunch of dim-bulbs from the big cities all around you in the woods!

Since the closest I could get to riding out a typhoon was to take my Dad's smaller boat up the river and try to "run the rapids" driving up the tail-race from the nearest dam, I decided to give the Navy a try. Besides, the only way I was going to get a college education was by going to one of the Service Academies (my HS guidance counselors said I'd be a "shoe-in"...they were both WWII/Korea USMC veterans). Qualified for appointments to West Point and Annapolis...decided to stick with going to sea to find out how much different from the big lakes it really was.

I was the Communications Officer and Special Intelligence Officer on that DE, packed with "unusual" electronics gear (we'll have none of those jokes about "Military Intelligence" here, if you please

). I well remember shredding many bags of documents and sending the RM Strikers to the fantail to dump 'em!

We were homeported out of Pearl Harbor. I say "out of" instead of "in" because we were hardly ever there; we were deployed repeatedly to S. China Sea, Gulf of Tonkin and Gulf of Thailand, and did a couple of "Spec Ops" much farther north as well...

Then it was on to other adventures...in all three unrestricted line officer branches (aviation, surface and submarine). "Sailing" is, indeed, a lot more fun than walking.

Oh oh...my "COB" is complaining that I need to get a move on and get out to the lawn & garden (I shoulda bought a houseboat on Lake Mead!).

BigWalleye · 05-06-13, 01:06 PM

Thanks, guys, for sharing your stories. And super big thanks for spending a major portion of your lives protecting the rest of us!

05-06-13, 11:30 AM	#18
CaptBones The Old Man Join Date: Nov 2010 Location: Rockton, IL Posts: 281 Downloads: 208 Uploads: 0	Sort of the same for me...but different. Well, I already knew what it was like to be soaking wet and knee-deep in mud or freezing cold and buried up to your arm-pits in snow and trying to get a bead on a target with guys everywhere yelling and screaming and throwing stuff at you...deer hunting season with a bunch of dim-bulbs from the big cities all around you in the woods! Since the closest I could get to riding out a typhoon was to take my Dad's smaller boat up the river and try to "run the rapids" driving up the tail-race from the nearest dam, I decided to give the Navy a try. Besides, the only way I was going to get a college education was by going to one of the Service Academies (my HS guidance counselors said I'd be a "shoe-in"...they were both WWII/Korea USMC veterans). Qualified for appointments to West Point and Annapolis...decided to stick with going to sea to find out how much different from the big lakes it really was. I was the Communications Officer and Special Intelligence Officer on that DE, packed with "unusual" electronics gear (we'll have none of those jokes about "Military Intelligence" here, if you please ). I well remember shredding many bags of documents and sending the RM Strikers to the fantail to dump 'em! We were homeported out of Pearl Harbor. I say "out of" instead of "in" because we were hardly ever there; we were deployed repeatedly to S. China Sea, Gulf of Tonkin and Gulf of Thailand, and did a couple of "Spec Ops" much farther north as well... Then it was on to other adventures...in all three unrestricted line officer branches (aviation, surface and submarine). "Sailing" is, indeed, a lot more fun than walking. Oh oh...my "COB" is complaining that I need to get a move on and get out to the lawn & garden (I shoulda bought a houseboat on Lake Mead!).

05-06-13, 01:06 PM	#19
BigWalleye Sea Lord Join Date: Jul 2012 Location: On the Eye-lond, mon! Posts: 1,987 Downloads: 465 Uploads: 0	Thanks, guys, for sharing your stories. And super big thanks for spending a major portion of your lives protecting the rest of us!